Body Image Q&A with Vic!! Navigating GLP-1 Pressure, Quieting Food Noise & Managing Triggers

♪♪ Lemonada. Sensing Sensibility. Rated PG. Parental guidance suggested. Only in theaters October 16th. The following podcast is a Dear Media production. Welcome to RealPod. It's your host, Victoria Garrick-Brown, and this is the podcast where we hold nothing back. Oh, so we're getting deep, huh? I really cried for 12 days straight. Why do I want to be perfect? There's nothing in my life that is perfect. Every week, I'll bring you honest, unfiltered, and eye-opening conversations to help uncover the real in all of us. I crave the type of content that you're talking about. I actually felt insecure. Oh my god, am I going to cry? Let me just unload everything. New episodes every Wednesday. Leave those filters at the door, because it's time to get real. Hello, everybody, and welcome back to RealPod. I'm so excited for this episode, because nothing gets me more fun. I'm so fired up and passionate, and nothing makes me feel more fulfilled than getting to connect with other women about our shared body image issues, struggles, problems with food, and then helping you work through it, and helping you get to a better place with all of that. Like, if I had one wish in this life, it would be to wave a wand and make all the body image issues, body insecurities, and all of that, and then I would be able to get to a better place with all of that. I would be able to get to a better place with all of that, and then I would be able to get to a better place with all of that, food issues, eating disorders, disordered eating, disappear. That is truly, like, my wish for women, because I know what it feels like to have such an obsession with your weight and food, specifically what you cannot eat, that it just feels all-consuming, and it monopolizes your every thought, experience, day, to step on the scale and hate the number you see. You have a binge-eating episode and then cry under your covers because you're so mad at yourself that you just ate because you think you need to be skinnier, and that was the opposite of what we were supposed to do, and so tomorrow, we have to restrict even harder. Like, literally, I have been that girl, and I know now what it is like to be so far from her and to feel such peace with food and my body, and therefore, in my life. All I want is to help everyone else who wants to get to that place get to that place, and that's why I was motivated to become an intuitive eating counselor. I wanted to be able to couple my lived experience, which feels like my entire life, with the actual expertise to be able to better serve you. So anyways, safe to say that recording this episode today just lights me up, and I hope that it is helpful for you, and if you enjoy it, I hope that it's helpful for you, and I hope that you enjoy it, and it makes a difference in your life. I hope you share that with someone else that you know could use this conversation, and I want to start by giving also a huge thank you to the very confident, brave, awesome, and vulnerable RealPod listeners who submitted voicemails for this episode. I'm going to keep everything anonymous, not that I think everyone wanted to be anonymous, but with just how my team and I have downloaded the audios, we don't have the time to do that. So I want to make sure that you guys know that I love you all. All right, and with that, let's get into this. Hi, Victoria. I love your podcast. I listen every Wednesday, and I love how openly you talk about diet culture, body image, and all the things. I'm just wondering how you deal with people who are around you, but not necessarily like your close friends who are constantly seeming to talk about what they're eating, how they're trying to shrink their body, and calories, working out, all that stuff. I'm just wondering how you deal with people who are around you, but not necessarily when you're recovering from an eating disorder. If it was my close friend, I feel like I would be comfortable saying, hey, this is something I've struggled with, but when they're not, but you're around them on the daily, how do you block that out while knowing that you can't consume that information for your own well-being? Thanks. Thank you for listening every Wednesday. Literally, I can't tell you how that just makes my heart flutter like a butterfly. I so appreciate it, and this is a great question, and I think something that a lot of people can relate to. What sucks is that we can't control how other people talk about their body, food, and dieting, but it does, and it can affect us. For this, I would say, while you can't control it, you can commit to not engaging with it. When I feel like I can't verbally state my boundary, as you said, you're not close enough with this person to really have that heart-to-heart, I feel like that's how I establish my boundary. For example, and this literally happened the other day, I'm at a table with a bunch of friends, and someone makes a comment about their body, and I just don't laugh at it, I don't smile at it, and I don't join in. I just kind of am like, it's like I'm stiff-arming. I don't want to make anyone uncomfortable, but I think when we do laugh, if someone says, I feel like a beached whale today, they're making a joke, right? That obviously has deeper meaning, especially for someone in recovery. I don't want to make anyone uncomfortable, but I think when we do laugh, I feel like it's encouraging the behavior around me. So I might just pretend I didn't hear it. I might just truly show that that was not an interesting comment on my face. I try to go blank. I don't give them a resting bitch face or an evil stare, but I'm just kind of like, if you're watching on YouTube, you're seeing my face right now. I'm just like, I'm looking around. It didn't phase me. And then I would say, if this is someone you're around every day, but you're not close to, I'm just like, I don't want to make anyone uncomfortable. I'm just like, I don't want to I'm guessing it's a work colleague. It's a teammate. It's someone in class. I do think there's something to be said about, can you limit your time around them? Don't get your lunch break with them. Don't sit next to them. Don't warm up with them because it is toxic to be around people who are like that. It's toxic. And you have done the work to get rid of that toxicity. So you can protect yourself in little baby ways. And then lastly, I would say you could always address it at a really high level. So for example, if this was a teammate on my volleyball team, but it wasn't my team, I might take the opportunity when the time is right to be like, can we all just like be nicer to ourselves? We work so hard. We're badasses. We're all beautiful. Let's try to have more positive self-talk. And you can approach it as a we issue and as generic and not pinpointed to this person. Wishing you the best of luck. Hey, Victoria. So excited you're doing this again. I just had a question on body image issues coming back. After you kind of thought you healed them already. So I'm about to turn 25. I just left a four-year relationship earlier this year. And I've noticed that being single, getting older, I've just become so much more aware of my body and my appearance and what other people might be thinking of me and how I look. And it's really kind of affected my mental health and even just approaching dating again and meeting new people, talking to new people. And I think that's a really good thing. When a lot of comments that are made to me are about my body or my physical appearance, it's brought back a lot of reminders and a lot of thoughts about like food, weight, exercise, all these things that I thought I had a great relationship with. Now it kind of feels like it's being questioned. So I just wonder how you would approach this. If you've experienced anything like this before, what you might say to anyone going through what feels like a relapse almost. Thank you. And I love you. I love you too. Thank you for submitting. I really appreciate it. And I know there's people out there nodding along like they are in a similar place. The first thing that stuck out to me was when you said you thought you had healed them already. Healing is a constant process. I know. I know. It sucks. We want to just know healing has a literal finish line that we can do X, Y, and Z, and we can cross it and we could never have to deal with the problem again. But life, we'll never leave you alone. Life is going to life. And healing is a constant process always. So allow yourself that grace to know that there is no finish line, right? It's a lifelong journey, but you are going to develop more strength throughout the journey. You're going to get better at dealing with the triggers, at having the coping skills, at calling on your tools. And so the journey will get easier as life goes on. In addition, I want to share with you something called the spiral of healing. So I've been super grateful to work directly with Elise Resch as I'm getting my intuitive eating counseling certificate. And I loved hearing about her spiral of healing. And I want you to like take your finger and you imagine your finger going up, but like a loop de loop. So it's going up and then it falls a little bit, makes a circle and it loops back up quickly. Okay. So we're loop de looping, but we're going up. trajectory is up, but we're going to have these little spirals. We're going to have these little moments where we seem to be trending backwards or reverting to old habits, but we are looping back upwards. So the momentum is always going to be a positive progress, but we might just be in that little spiral, that little loop. And it sounds like you're making your turn right now. And it's not fun, right? It's better when you feel like you're just going on that straight path upward. So that's the first thing, right? Is to know that this is a process and you are human and it is normal and it is expected to have times in life where you are challenged and you have to deal with this again. Which leads me to my second tip, to meet that voice with lots of compassion and lots of friendly curiosity. So for example, when I feel like I've had some thoughts resurface, should we check the calories? Or I wonder what I would weigh if I stepped on a scale. I might say to myself, that voice in my head, huh? Hi, you. I forgot you were in there. I thought we said goodbye a long time ago. That's so weird and funny that you are back today. But no, I don't rock like that anymore. That's not what I know is best for me. So it's meeting that voice with that kindness and compassion. Oh yeah. I know why you're here. I went through a lot of shit with my body and food. I've been through a lot of traumatic things when it comes to this incident. So it makes sense that right now, I'm in a situation where I'm in a situation where I'm in a situation where I'm in a in this situation, you're chiming in, right? So we're not going to be upset with ourselves that we've had the thought, ah, it makes sense. Okay. But we're going to couple this with the third tip. You've overcome this before, right? You said you thought you healed this. So you got to a really good place. I love that for you. So you've been there, done that. You know what your tools in the school belt are. You know the resources you need to maybe reread, relisten to the therapy or counseling appointment that helps you. You know that maybe you could make again. So remember that you've done this before and you can figure it out again. So just take that deep breath, come back to yourself and really get grounded in what you ultimately want. And when this happens to me, I remind myself what I ultimately want is peace with myself, peace with food and peace with my body. And that helps me in the times when I'm looping, stay the course. I hope this helped. This episode of RealPod is sponsored by none other than my favorite Cozy Earth. Cozy Earth would be such a great gift this holiday season, whether it's for you or for a loved one, you can give the gift of a better sleep. Crafted from viscose from bamboo for a soft feel that keeps you cozy without overheating. The Cozy Earth bamboo sheets are truly my favorite. Max and I have been sleeping on them for I think five years now. 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So find Crunchmaster at a store near you. Satisfy your crunch without compromising on taste or texture and enjoy Crunchmaster crackers today. I would just love thoughts, ideas, recommendations, advice of just how to cope with kind of the current climate and all of that stuff. I would just love to see Crunchmaster at a store near you. I would love to see Crunchmaster at a store near you. I would love to see you. I would love to see one goes off the drug, they will be met with the emotional or personal issues that they were trying to solve or avoid when they got on it in the first place. And look, that doesn't make me happy. I want the best for everyone. I'm just saying for those who need the pep talk, the one that you're asking for right now on this podcast to stay grounded in what you know is your path and what's best for you, this is me hyping you up in that way. And look, when I have cried about this to my husband, because sometimes it just gets to you. It really gets to you when you have tried to do so much work to heal your relationship with food and body image. And then everywhere you look, it's like, you should be skinnier. You should be smaller. And everyone's doing it. And here's how to do it. It's really hard, especially to I go to that avoidance part when you know that there are certain people who are avoiding doing the work that you maybe are doing, right? But that's another thing. We're doing the hard work of self-acceptance, of self-love. And to me, that is everything. I feel like that's what life is all about, is to face your inner demons and your insides head on and to work through them and to become a stronger person and to heal. And I think something else that the whole GLP-1, phenomenon highlights is that so many people are choosing skinny over the reality that it can make your body physically sick, impact your health, your mental health, and lead to long-term physical consequences down the road. People are literally saying, I don't care. That's how bad I want to be skinny. And I empathize with that so deeply, so deeply. I've said this before, and I'll say it again. If Ozempic and these GLP-1s came out, when I was in high school or my freshman year of college, I would have taken it. I literally, one time, tried to give myself food poisoning. That's how desperate I was to find certain methods to lose weight. I would have taken it. I am no better, right? I've just been through the bulk of my healing and recovery before this all came out. So I also want to clarify that. We're all on the same team. I am grateful, though, that these have come out at a place where I feel like I've done the work and I've done the work. And I feel like I've done the work. And I feel like my foundation is strong and this is not going to penetrate my walls. So I'll end this by saying, as hard as it is to see it happening all around you, your friends, your family, what they're thinking, what they're doing, every commercial, lots of celebs, I just come back to the fact that I will choose peace and I will choose doing the work. And that's what works best for me. And even people on GLP-1s who've lost a lot of weight still have insecurity. You know, and I think this is a time where you're going to be tested and you need to decide what you think is best for you and what you can stomach, literally. And I think I've set my values in place on my self-acceptance journey, and it does not include a GLP-1. And so that's how I've been navigating it. I've allowed myself to feel the frustration, the anger, the unfairness, the concern, the disappointment. And I remind myself that I'm choosing peace with myself. You've got this. You're not alone. And some days are harder than others, but just come back to your compass. And thank you for submitting this question. I think it's on everyone's minds. Hi, Vic. I'm a huge fan of the podcast and I love listening every week. I am leaving a voicemail because diet and health and fitness culture has been a common theme in my family since I was a kid. And I've been listening to it every week. And I've been listening to it since I was little. My parents are super active and very healthy eaters. My mom is even a fitness instructor. And some of my other family members are also in the nutrition field. And I'm just wondering how you suggest that I stay in my own body and know what's right for me without succumbing to any pressures from my family or even from social media and what other people are doing, because it's hard when everyone is doing. all of these crazy diets and supplements and things for their body. And it makes me think I should do it for mine too, even if I'm feeling good in my body currently. So just wanted to get your advice on how to stay away from succumbing to those pressures. Thanks. Bye. Similar to the last one, but hits on a different point. And I'm glad you brought this up because I want to talk about it. And it's really like, I know what's best for me, but I'm feeling pressure from people around me to do something. And I'm like, I don't know what's best for me, but I'm feeling pressure and that's what I want to focus on. So at the end of the day, you are the only person who can truly know your body, your needs, your physical, emotional, and spiritual needs. Okay. And it is you who has to lay your head on the pillow at night and live with the choices that you make every day, right? We could be told by someone, oh, you should do this. You should take that job. You should dump him. You should marry him. And they might not think that that's what we should do, but guess who has to actually live it? You, us, right? And I think this is something I've gotten better at as I've gotten older is like self-advocacy and a really acute knowing and sense of self-esteem. So this is a random example, but my back is broken. I have a fracture on my lower back and I know what positions when I'm working out hurt my back and how much pain that's going to cause me and how long it will take to go away. And I have learned that if I don't advocate for myself and say, no, I can't do that position. No, I can't stretch that way. No, I can't bend that way. And I just, oh, I think I can. I don't want to let them down. Let me do it. Guess who has to live with the back pain for the next three weeks until it heals? Me. And having gone through that, I have gained such a sense of like, no, I see the workout. I get the description of it. I can't do that. And they might say, no, you can, you just need to push yourself. Well, what we, I don't care. Self-advocacy. Like I know that that is not what's going to work for me. And the only advocate you really have for yourself is you. So all that to say, they might be preaching what works for them, but it might not be what works for you. So I think it's okay. You know, whether the language is like, I so appreciate you sharing that, but I've actually found that this is what's best for me, or that's so interesting. I actually love eating a bagel for breakfast every morning and I feel right. We're all different. And then the other food for thought I'll give you is that they might be preaching their punishment. I'm not talking about your parents. Cause it didn't sound like they were giving you negative things. Think about this. There are people who maybe their whole lives were told by their parents or school. They were bullied, right? You can't be in a large body. You need to go on a diet. You need to lose weight. You have to eat a certain way, right? They were like punished for existing as themselves. And now when they get older, they subconsciously are projecting because they can't stand to see a happy person, a larger body. Who's not trying to lose weight. Who's not on a diet because in deep down in their mind, they're like, wait, but I wasn't allowed to be happy in a larger body. I had to go through all this stuff. So I'm not going to let anyone think it's okay to be in a larger body. Right. And those are the people who are like so obsessed with someone else's body, which is literally crazy. I guess I say that to say like having the awareness too of, someone might be subconsciously. It's like their inner child projecting like, oh, you can't have that much dessert or you can't have seconds because maybe they were never allowed to have it or they don't let themselves have it. And it's triggering for them to see someone else like live without those food rules and without those guardrails and like love and accept their body how it is. So to wrap it up, you know, you're the only person who can know yourself and your needs and just be wary of someone else preaching their punishments. This episode of RealPod is brought to you by Nature Sunshine. And I'm so glad it is because on my long days when I am recording multiple RealPod episodes and I'm working and I've got these bright lights in my eyes and all these notes and words to read, I can feel cognitive overload or brain frog. I literally just said frog. That's my perfect example or brain fog. You feel me? It's happening now. And if you're also struggling to stay focused or feeling distracted on back to back calls or you have decision fatigue slowing down your day, turn to Nature Sunshine Brain Edge. It helps you feel more focused, clear headed and alert during mentally demanding parts of your day. They're so yummy and simple to drink. It enhances your focus and clarity because of its nootropic botanicals, which help you concentrate and stay sharp. It supports memory and learning, promoting recall and mental stamina with ingredients like bacopa and ginkgo. And it delivers smooth, sustained energy through wild harvested yerba mate, which provides natural caffeine without the jitters or crash. That's huge for me because, you know, I'm not a huge coffee drinker. I don't like pounding tons of caffeine. It gives me anxiety, honestly. So I love having Brain Edge as an option that works for me. I have another podcast I need to record today. So you bet I'm turning to Brain Edge because I need to lock back in and focus. So don't fight through feeling foggy and lethargic. Ignite your mental performance with Brain Edge. Nature Sunshine is offering 20% off your first order. plus free shipping, go to naturesunshine.com and use the code REALPOD at checkout. That's code REALPOD at naturesunshine.com. Hey, Vic. I wanted to open the conversation around the concept of food noise. Food noise is something I had never heard of until GLP-1s really became more popular. It seems like a buzzword in that community. They say things along the lines of like, oh, this medication eliminates my food noise. What a dream, right? And as someone with a history of disordered eating, and as someone who is inundated left and right with GLP-1 ads, so much so, I'll admit this, I've never told anyone this before, but I actually, a couple months ago, was in a low place, body image-wise, and I ordered, I went online, I filled out a questionnaire, I paid $200, and I received a vial of medication and a pack of needles in the mail shortly after. That's insane that it's that easy, and that's another tangent. But by the time I got to my house, I knew that this is not for me. I am not going to take this. This does not feel authentic. In my recovery journey, but I'm still left thinking about that concept of food noise, that promise of quieting the food noise. So I guess I'm wondering what comes up for you when you think of food noise. How can we improve our relationships with our own food noise? How can we lean into intuitive eating when it comes to food noise? Because yeah, I think it's something that a lot of people really struggle with, and when a medication is promising to quiet that noise, it sounds pretty damn good. But anyways, I appreciate you so much. I'm so thankful that you're having these conversations. And yeah, bye-bye. Thank you for sharing that. And I completely understand why you wanted to fill out that questionnaire and order the GLP-1. It all makes sense to me, the pressure put on us to have these perfect tiny bodies. And so I just want to validate that. I totally understand how that happened. And please don't shame yourself. For, you know, that circumstance. And also, I'm really proud of you that you took a beat and you realized that you want to choose a different route. Look, food noise is very real. And for anyone listening who's like, I've never heard the term food noise. Think of it as that voice in your head that obsesses over food, obsesses over what you can eat and what you can't eat. And it is there often, if not all the time. I definitely have had wild food noise back when I was a kid. Wild food noise back when I was constantly dieting, binge eating, you know, every day. It was like, I'm writing out what I can eat tomorrow and I can only eat this. And then I wake up thinking, okay, I get to eat this and I can't eat that. And then I'm on my way to class and someone offers me a donut because it's their birthday. And I say, no, I can't have that. And, you know, you're just constantly thinking about it. It's so exhausting. It can get so loud. And back to what I said at the top of this episode, like helping people remove their food noise, like lights me up. Passion of mine. So I'm glad you asked this. First, I want to just create like an analogy. So food noise never goes away. And what I mean by that is it's, it never dies. Okay. But I want you to think of it like you have an apartment building inside of your head and think of food noise as the floor right above you. They're your upstairs neighbor. You can hear them walking around. When they yell at you, you can hear it. When they bang, you can hear it. Like they are right there. You hear them every day. Now, as we work on healing our food noise, our apartment building grows. And that neighbor who was once right above us gets moved higher and higher and higher until it's just a faint little noise. You can barely hear it or better yet, you forget you even live in the same building. And I would like to say that that's honestly how my relationship with my food noise has been for the majority of the past seven years is I sometimes forget it lives in the same building. But of course, sometimes I hear it. I hear those faint little yells and those footsteps. And I'm like, there it is. Now, what are the things that cause food noise? One, persistent diet culture. So seeing that messaging all the time is very convincing. It's very brainwashing. And that fuels the voice. Oh, I saw this commercial that said we shouldn't eat this. I saw this influencer your legs to gain weight. I saw this video say that we shouldn't eat at this time. All that messaging and that persistent diet culture causes food noise. Another cause is food restrictions. So if we tell ourselves we're not allowed to have certain things, the food noise loves that. It literally loves when you say it can't have something. It's going to obsess over it more. That's like basic being a human 101 though. If I put a shiny sparkly box on your desk and I said, no matter what, do not open this. Don't touch this box. Don't open it. You can't know what's inside. You're going to want to know what's inside the box. You're going to have a little voice that's like, wait, should we check the box? I think we could just peek. She's not here. Let's look at the box. It's going to obsess over what you can't have. So when we go on diets and we say we're not allowed to have carbs or we're not allowed to have dessert or we're not allowed to have any sugar, that fuels the food noise. Another thing too is just not allowing our body's biological hunger and fullness cues be our compass. What are our biological hunger and fullness cues? Well, think about the last time you were with a baby. What happens when the baby cries? Usually they're hungry. They don't know how to talk. They don't know how to go make themselves a bottle of milk. They sense that they're hungry and they start crying. And then what happens when they're fed? They're so happy and they stop crying. So we are born with a biological hunger and fullness cues. But as life goes on, we stray from listening to that because back to diet culture, we're told not to listen to ourselves, but to listen to what diet culture is telling us. So those are three ways in which the food noise is created and fueled. There's of course more, but I want to just stick to those three. Intuitive eating definitely can help move that food noise up so far in your apartment building that you forget you live with it. That's how it happened for me. Now I can share at a high level, some of the intuitive eating principles that help with getting rid of food noise. These are practices though, that you need to instill over time to help heal and grow. I wish I could say bang, bang, bang, do those things. And you will not have food noise. Unfortunately, as we all know, that is not how life works when it comes to solving emotional problems. So it's going to take time and practice, but some things for you to think about. The first one is rejecting the diet mentality. So I said that diet culture is, a huge thing that fuels the food noise. So what's something we can do to mitigate that reject the diet mentality. So I could give you some emotional reasons why we should reject diet culture, right? It sucks. It's the patriarchy. It's telling us we're not good enough the way we are. But today I want to give you some facts. First of all, studies show that up to two thirds of people who go on diets and lose weight, regain more weight than they lost. What is the telling us? Diets don't work. More than half of the people who go on diets regain more weight after the fact. Another fact, 35% of people who are regular and normal dieters will progress into disordered eating. So if you go on a diet, there's a 35% chance that you will progress into disordered eating. This one's scary, but it's real. People whose weight goes up and down. So if you're weight in, you actually have twice the normal risk of dying of heart disease. And lastly, I'm actually going to go grab my intuitive eating book because I want to read this one. When I read this, it was so shocking to me. I was like, how is this not mainstream knowledge? I'm such a visual person. I'm like, I remember it was on the bottom left. Found it. Okay. It's titled dieting increases your risk for weight cycling. Dieting programs had to stand up to the same scrutiny as medications. Never be allowed for public consumption. Imagine for example, taking an asthma medication that improves your breathing for a few weeks, but in the long run causes rebound asthma attacks and ultimately damages your lungs. Would you blame yourself for the medication not working yet still continue to take it? Of course not. That's what the process of dieting is like. Even if your really embark on a diet, if you knew that it would ultimately fail, the pursuit of weight is so problematic. It perpetuates weight cycling and harms your relationship with food, mind, and body. And here's the kicker. The relationship between dieting and gaining back more weight is so strong that an Australian national health and medical research council rated it level a evidence, which according to academic Fiona Willer is the scientific equivalent of smoking causing lung cancer. And that passage was from the intuitive eating book by Elise Resch and Evelyn Tribolet. Okay. So that's one way that we can start to mitigate food noise is to stop buying into diet culture. Another way is to honor your cravings. So remember how I talked about that sparkly box and if we can't have it, we want it. What are the foods that you've told yourself you absolutely cannot have? Let's say it's chocolate cake. Anytime you see chocolate cake, that upstairs neighbor is going to be screaming, screaming at you. We can't have the cake. Don't touch the cake. You're not allowed to eat the cake, right? Because we've, we're not allowed to have it. But when we honor our cravings, that food noise has nothing to yell about. Why would it? yell about not having chocolate cake if we knew we were allowed to have chocolate cake. You know what I mean? And lastly, another tip to start quieting the food noise is to focus on satisfaction. So instead of eating what you think you should, choose foods you genuinely find satisfying. I had the honor recently of conducting my first intuitive eating counseling sessions with two separate clients, and it was so rewarding. And something that came through in my work was the realization that so many women have never been encouraged to enjoy the food they're eating, to feel satisfied, to ask themselves, huh, what do I want to eat? What sounds good? So if you focus on satisfaction and you're satisfied, that food noise will also start to dissipate. Because why would it be yelling if it was satisfied? Think about when you are like really tired after a long day and you just took your shower and all you want to do is get into your bed and go under the covers, okay? When you get in your bed and go under the covers, you just feel so satisfied. You wouldn't want to get back up and then like go get in another bed under the covers. Like you did the thing you needed and you feel content. Conversely, think about if all you want to do is get in your bed under the covers and you go downstairs and you sit in a dining room chair and you tell yourself, this is where we have to sleep. All you're going to do is think about a comfortable bed. See how that works? So when we start to peel back the layers and work on some of these things, that's how we're going to quiet the food noise. I took a little longer to answer that because I wanted to give you the full picture. I obviously couldn't give full masterclass on it, but I hope that that was helpful. High level food for thought. I love saying food for thought on an episode about food. It's just such a funny example. Okay, we're almost done. We've got one more. Hi, Victoria. First of all, I love your podcast and just everything you stand for. My question is about when you have struggled with disordered eating and body image issues, but your partner hasn't, how to navigate those conversations and how you explain things to your husband when he might not necessarily struggle with the same things that you do. Just any guidance in that area would be great. Thanks. Definitely. Happy to help. And I'm going to give you two quick things on how you can approach this. First, share your experiences. Get vulnerable. Have that heart to heart. You know, hey, this was the eating disorder I experienced in high school before we met. Or these are the body image issues I'm currently struggling with. And I want you to know about this because you're my partner. And if you were struggling, I'd want you to come to me. And I just know it's going to make me feel better if I have you in this, right? So the first thing is, I'm going to give you two quick things on how you can share your experiences. It's scary. I remember doing this with Max for the first time. I was in college telling him about my binge eating problems. And I remember we were laying in his bed together. The lights were off. And we were like about to fall asleep. And I just started to open up. And I felt like more comfortable that it was dark and we didn't have to have eye contact and we could just be cuddling. And like, I felt safe in that way. So I mean, just sharing that in case you're like sitting across from them and the dinner table feels like a little too formal, whatever. Environment you need to create so that you can fully share your experiences so that they can just know what you've been through, what you're going through. Maybe you're saying, this is the way that I was raised. These are the comments my parents made. This is how I was bullied, right? Take them through that so that they're up to speed and that you feel like they understand as much as they can the situation you're in. And lastly, it's just to share what you need to feel safe and supported. So after you share all that, you know, thank you for sharing that. And you feel like they know what your struggle is. Next, it's just, and here are the ways that you can support me or the ways that you can help me feel safe on this healing journey. And those are going to be specific to you and your situation and your triggers. For example, I've talked about this before, but I don't like any judgment on what I'm eating. Of course, it happens naturally. You know, someone will make a comment. That's a lot of food. Are you still hungry? Whatever. But with my husband, Max, who I can very clearly state my boundaries and what I need, I've said to him, it's really important to me that you never make any comments about what I'm eating or any judgments about what I'm eating. It's just a sensitive spot for me. For example, I know that with Max, I can go get a pint of ice cream and sit on the couch and eat it with a spoon and that when I'm done having ice cream, I can put that away and I can grab pretzels and I can munch on those. Like, I know that I can eat what I want when I'm hungry without question. He would never say to me, are you still hungry? Or we just say dinner. And I feel so safe knowing he'd never make that comment because it's back to what we talked about earlier. Only I know my body. I might purposely have not eaten dinner to a complete point of fullness because I wanted to have pretzels and ice cream as my dessert. You know, it's not his business. It's my relationship with food. Maybe I do feel full, but it's not his business. Maybe I do feel full, but I feel a little emotional and I'm excited to be with him and I want to have ice cream and then I want to have pretzels and I'm allowed to do that. Obviously, we want to be listening to our hunger and fullness cues, but of course, we're going to emotionally eat. We're human and sometimes we're excited. We're bored. We want comfort, you know, but we want to be aware of that. We want to do it to a point where we still feel comfortable, right, with the food we're consuming. So, you know, the first thing is to share your experiences. And the second thing is to share what you need to feel safe and supported. I hope that that helps. Thank you all for your incredible questions for sending me such beautiful and loving energy through the voicemails. Like, I seriously have been feeling so burned out and so unmotivated and listening to your voicemails today and preparing for this episode. It just gave me some light that I feel like I haven't had in the past few weeks because I've been feeling so exhausted. And so I want to thank you all for bringing that to me today. I hope that you enjoyed this episode. Send it to someone and I will see you back here next Wednesday on Real Podcast. Thank you so much for listening to this episode of RealPod. If this hit home or helped you in some way, send it to a friend, a teammate, roomie, share the love, share the realness. New episodes of RealPod come out every single Wednesday. So make sure you are subscribed to this podcast so you never miss an episode. To leave a rating or review of the show, head to iTunes and let me know what you think. I love hearing from you. Not to mention you can stay connected with RealPod throughout the week. If you're new to the show, please subscribe to the podcast. And I'll see you behind the scenes info and sneak previews of upcoming guests by following the at RealPod account on Instagram. 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