Episode 262: Intuitive Eating to Ease Food Fear and Anxiety with Gillian Hood
Join Kelli and guest Gillian Hood, intuitive eating coach, as we talk about the relationship between food and anxiety, as well as how intuitive eating can help us make peace with food.
To tune into the episode, listen on iTunes or Spotify.
Show Notes
Kelli interviews Gillian Hood. Intuitive Eating coach Gillian Hood supports women in breaking free from disordered eating, body hatred, and a life revolving around food. Learn more about Gillian and her work here.
Kelli and Gillian discuss:
What is disordered eating? What are the similarities and differences between disordered eating and eating disorders? How does body image fit into it?
How does anxiety exacerbate eating and body issues? How do eating and body issues exacerbate anxiety?
Food and body focus/obsession can be coping mechanisms as well as distractions to avoid anxiety and other uncomfortable feelings. Why doesn’t that coping work well long-term?
It's not about the food or your body! It’s about understanding where your food/body challenges, beliefs, thoughts, and behaviors come from (childhood, peers, diet culture, online sources, healthcare, the wellness industrial complex, etc.). Understanding your food/body challenges is an important part of beginning the healing process.
Other factors that influence food and body issues, which are often forgotten or ignored, include trauma, social determinants of health, racism, classism, ACEs, and two relatively new "isms" - sizeism and healthism.
The main components of making peace with food and your body: unlearning diet culture, intuitive eating, Health at Every Size®, self-compassion, becoming your own best expert on you and your body.
What you can do today to begin to heal and make peace with food and/or your body.
One way that anxiety shows up in kiddos is with food habits because it’s one of the few areas they have some autonomy/control. It can becomes a maladaptive coping habit, but it’s also normal for kids to exert control in this area.
Kelli shares her own experience with controlling food. It wasn’t about losing weight but control through “food matching.” Now when old habits creep in, it’s an indicator that she needs to tune in and see what she’s feeling and what she might need more or less of in her life. It’s an indication that more self-care, not self-control, is needed.
