#22 "Understanding Disordered Eating: Compassion & The Impact of Conversations on Food and Body Image" with guest Jane Pilger

Okay. Welcome to another episode of Teen Minds Redefine, where we try to redefine the relationships we have with our teenagers. We want to foster them into growing into their own true authentic selves as we support and coach as opposed to demanding control. And today we are talking about empowering parents navigating body image, food freedom and parental influence over that. And I have a beautiful guest, Jane Pilger, is a compassionate advocate empowering women who struggle with food-related challenges to discover food freedom and cultivate body trust. And with a deep understanding of the complexities surrounding disordered eating and

body image issues, Jane guides women on the transformative journey from battling their bodies to embracing them as allies. Drawing upon her expertise in neuroscience, trauma-informed care, and compassionate coaching, Jane helps her clients unlock the missing link between their behaviors and their inner struggles. Her mission is to provide women with the tools and support they need to develop self-trust, understand their behaviors, and create a safe and nurturing relationship with food and their bodies. I'm so excited to have Jane here. Thank you for joining me today. Jane Miller,

MD Thank you so much, Cheryl. I'm really excited to be here today.

Me too. I think there's just so much. There's so much to talk about when it comes to body image. But I think, can we start with your definition of body image? Can we start with like, what is disordered eating? What is, let's define it first for people.

Yeah, so body image, I mean, really, to just simplify it as much as possible, body image really is your collection of thoughts and beliefs about your body. I mean, it's as simple as that. Yeah, yeah. And as far as disordered eating, you know, we could get into the DSM-5, the manual that really very specifically goes in and diagnoses the various eating disorders and their characteristics and all of that. And I don't, yes, I think in some cases it is important and it is necessary. But to me, if we just look at overall disordered eating, what is

disordered eating? Disordered eating is when anyone has a relationship with food that impacts their overall day-to-day life, their quality of life, the way that they show up in the world, is the relationship kind of between themselves, food, and their bodies, it is negatively impacting life in some way.

Would you consider eating disorders in the same category as self-harm?

I don't. And the reason that I don't is I mean it's a good question and and I would say this I think that eating disorders and I mean I guess I'm not as familiar with self-harm as I am with disordered eating. So in terms of I certainly do not consider myself to be an expert on the subject of self-harm. I do think in terms of self-harm, sometimes self-harm comes in like from an attempt to find relief in some way. Sometimes when people think about self-harm, they think it's like an intent, like an intent. And when I

said, I don't initially, is my brain was going to this place of the idea of I am harming myself intentionally, like the intent to harm. And I do not believe that that eating disorders are come from a place of intent to harm. So sometimes people who suffer from disordered eating, particularly, let's say with binge eating, for example, they might eat a lot of food, and they might just think like, Oh, I hate myself, I hate myself so much, I hate that I do this. And they feel like they're eating kind of to punish themselves. And it's

but I really don't think it is an intent or an attempt to self harm. I think more like more often what happens is that there's so much internal self-judgment and self-loathing that we're not trying to hurt ourselves. We're not trying to punish ourselves. We're trying to get away from ourselves. There's so much the the internal language and the dialogue is so mean, and it's so pervasive. But we can't we literally cannot get away from it unless we do something that completely disconnects ourselves from ourselves. And for many people with disordered eating, they have figured out a

way to use food in some way to kind of create that disconnection from from self. Then I think that's more likely what happens there.

And that makes sense. It only actually just occurred to me, like 10 minutes. It's the same. I wonder if so can you go over the categories or I don't know itemize what eating disorders or disordered eating is I know there's bulimia but what is there what else is there? What is it? Briefly? What does it look like? Unknown

Speaker Oh, well, that's a that's a really big question. And I, personally, I don't really consider myself to be an expert in all eating disorders. For me binge eating, binge eating is my lived experience, both restrictive, I've kind of experienced, I've experienced 3 different levels. So you have the more restrictive type of eating disorders, which can be anorexia, nervosa, and just restrictive types of eating disorders, which is we are restricting the amount of food that we eat. There's also then binge, there's binge eating, binge eating disorder, where we're consuming large amounts of food at any given

time. There's also with binge eating, sometimes there is an attempt to compensate for the amount eaten, and sometimes there isn't. So when there's an attempt to compensate for the amount eaten, that might look like bulimia, where maybe somebody is trying to purge in some way. So whether that's through vomiting, whether it's through laxatives, whether it's through excessive exercise, kind of an attempt to compensate for the overconsumption. In some cases, there isn't an attempt to compensate for the overconsumption. There are also different kind of areas. There's, there is, if we're looking at the DSM-5, the diagnostic manual,

there is the eating disorders not otherwise specified. So if it doesn't fall into these categories, there can be a catch-all for, there's a lot of different areas where there might just be a hyper focus on the quality of food. So this is very, this is something that's happening a lot more lately is kind of this emphasis on, you have probably heard the term clean eating, where we have this hyper focus on the quality, either the quality of the food, it has to be organic, it has to be unprocessed, it has to be whole, there has to

be, there can be this real fixation on the type of food. So that can also be kind of a category. If you are, If you are a person who has a hard time going to, for example, if you have a hard time going to a potluck, where you don't really know what's going to be there, there's going to be a lot of you know, you don't really have control, there's going to be maybe 10 different things, people are just going to be bringing things. If you're 1 of those people that's like, I don't even like to

go to those things, because I can't control what's in my food, I don't know what's in every single ingredient. Those types of things are kind of good indicators. There might be some sort of disordered eating happening.

Okay. That's interesting. So are there misconceptions around disordered eating?

Yes, I think there's a lot of misconceptions around disordered eating. There are, for example, 1 of the 1 of the misconceptions I think that that that I would receive a lot is people would look at me, and they would say, you, you, there's no way you could have an eating disorder. Because if you looked at me from the outside, I'm a straight sized, average sized person. And so somebody might look at me and be like, there's, there's no way that you could bet that you could, you know, be a binge eater, like you're not, There's kind

of this idea that to have for example to have binge eating disorder that you would be very overweight or you know so the the misconception is this the misconception is that you can just look at somebody and be able to tell whether or not they have an eating disorder. So basically you can have, no matter what, no matter what size you are, you can have an eating disorder. You can, you can have, you can have anorexia and be clinically in the obese category. I did not know that. Yes, absolutely. Yes, there are a lot of people

who generally like live in larger bodies. They genetically are just, you know, just like dogs, we all are designed to have a different size and shape of frame of a body. But what happens is that we, we end up seeing all these images and who is portrayed on TV and in the movies and in the magazines and we think, oh, that that is the standard of beauty. That's the body I want. So what we do is we we suppress where our body naturally wants to be. So you might have a woman who just lives in a

naturally larger body, the natural size that her body wants to be is larger. But because she has received all of these, these messages from society that the beauty ideal is thinner, she is eating very much less food than her body requires because she's trying to suppress her natural body size. So she literally could check off many of the indicators for anorexia, restrictive eating disorder, but be but nobody else would be able to would really even think that's possible. Because she's in a bigger body, You kind of like we have these ideas of an anorexic person and

like a lot of people have this mental image of what that body might look like and that is not always the case.

That's really interesting. And I can't be the first to think I had no idea.

Yeah, no, you are definitely not the first to think that at all. Yeah, and this becomes a problem Because if you are this woman who is in a naturally has a naturally bigger body And then you go to the doctor and you tell them you know Hey here here are the challenges that I'm facing. Here's what's going on and I'm not even eating that much food. What happens in a lot of cases is the doctor is like, there's no way, I don't believe you. There's no way you could be in that size of body and not

be eating very much food, which then just reinforces for her, there must be something wrong with me. I must be broken. My body needs to change. And so I'm just going to keep essentially starving myself because I'm trying to manipulate my body to be this thing that I believe is better. I mean, that really disordered eating, disordered eating can, and any of our eating challenges can really come from a lot of different places. So I believe that there are there really 8 reasons kind of behind at least for when when I talk about the 8 reasons,

but it's specifically for binge eating, but a lot of these reasons, really, they, they cross over to really any sort of disordered eating or any challenges, any challenges with food. And so those reasons, number 1, it's shame and judgment. Shame and judgment over, particularly when we're talking about binge eating, it's like there's so much shame and there's so much judgment when you just feel so out of control with food, like you just feel like you can't stop. And that there really must be something wrong with me because of just the sheer volume of food that I'm

eating. And when we're in shame and judgment, then all we wanna do is kind of like get away. We wanna escape, we wanna hide. We wanna hide from ourselves, we wanna hide from other people. We don't want to kind of like hear that the the loathing whether that's coming from somebody else or from ourselves internally. So that can kind of just like keep us in the cycle. But restriction is for binge eating restriction is, is 1 of the main kind of factors and causes. So what can happen is sometimes for some people, and this has absolutely

been the case for me, I have, I have had both restrictive eating tendencies, and also binge eating, binge eating tendencies. So it's like, you know, you would kind of have the restrictive eating, the extreme dieting, the you know, the calorie counting, the trying to, you know, only eat 1 time a day, or, you know, have these very long extended windows where we don't eat, or we cut out entire food groups or these types of things, the often when we do that, we end up eating way less food than our body actually needs. And so then what

happens as a survival mechanism, the body's very smart, it knows exactly what it needs, it's going to ultimately at some point say, fine, if you're not going to feed me, I'm going to get the food that I need, no matter what from some place. And this is often what ends up kind of starting the binge eating cycle where you literally feel like you have no control. You cannot stop eating. And it's like it's your body's response to that. That's essentially that threat of that threat of starvation. And that kind of keeps it in a cycle. But

that's not the only reason that some people start. It is 1 of the main reasons, but then there's also 1 of the other reasons is nervous system dysregulation. So if you are, let's say you experienced some sort of trauma in your life of any type, a lot of people have have realized that they can, food can very much be a coping mechanism. It can soothe a dysregulated nervous system, whether that was trauma, whether they needed to escape and disconnect for some other reason to protect and help themselves. We kind of learn how to disconnect through food.

And so then that can kind of become a starting point. So that can be part of it disconnecting just disconnection from the body in general. A lot of people kind of live from the neck up. We're kind of just all I also very much resonate with this, we're just in our minds all the time. We're not actually in our bodies. And so when we're in our minds, and our nervous system is dysregulated, we end up using food to kind of number 1, stay disconnected, but then also to try to kind of calm calm ourselves down.

Hence comfort food.

Yes exactly why we call it comfort food and that's then the the fifth reason is it's a coping mechanism. So if we don't have a large what I call your emotional capacity, so your emotional capacity is your capacity to be with any emotion. And many of us just didn't learn this. I didn't growing up. And so when I would experience these, you know, kind of big emotions when I was in high school, I would just go to my room and slam the door and I would just be pissed. And I wish so much that I could

remember what I did when I went in my room and slammed the door, but I don't remember. I would come up the next day, we would never talk. We wouldn't talk about it. It would just be as if nothing ever happened. And so when I went to college, I'm experiencing all these very big emotions. I'm also away from my primary, my friends, my family, my attachments, and I didn't know what to do with all of this stuff. And so that I start my very first binge was my first semester in college, which is very common. And

what I realized was that for me, binging became, it was like the way that I slammed the door on myself. Was like, only later in treatment did I really realize that's what I was doing, because I didn't have any other method, I didn't have any other ways to deal with my emotions. I didn't even, I just didn't have that skill. We also, another reason, reason number 6 is it's an attempt to control. We're trying to control either our bodies, this is often the case, right? Like the the size of our body, we're trying to control exactly

what we eat, what you know, we don't eat how much we weigh all of that we're just trying to control everything. Or sometimes we feel if we feel like everything else in life is just very out of control. If I can control my food, if I can control exactly all of the things, it can, it's just that it's an attempt to control, especially when things feel a little out of control. Ultimately, you do something over and over again, it becomes a habit. So that's reason number 7. And then the eighth reason is your personal narrative. It's

the way you talk to yourself about yourself. So if I'm thinking and then this kind of even then comes back to the whole body image discussion, right? It's like, if I am just constantly saying to myself, you're gross, you're disgusting, you, you know, you're fat, you need to lose weight, what you need to whatever it is, like all of that also it compounds everything. Because again, if I'm saying all these bad things to myself, I just I don't I don't want to I don't want to hear that I want to get away. And now what I've

learned to do over time and over the years is to get away from myself with food. That's how I slam the door. It's how I, the other analogy I use is like, it's like it's how I turn the lights off on myself. And some people use something else to turn the lights off on themselves, right, that that disconnecting from ourself, our experience, our internal dialogue, it's something that, you know, we do, in a lot of different ways, some people use food to do that and some people, you know, kind of use other other things.

Wow. So how do we, is there a point where, and I'm thinking, now I'm thinking moms, looking at their kids as well. I mean, how do we influence that at home? What are we saying? Like if our kids looking at Taylor Swift, our kids looking at, what are we saying? Like I don't know what I would, I don't like you're beautiful from the inside out, whatever it is, I don't know what I would, what I had said to my kids. But what are we saying at home when they're looking at these pictures, when they're admiring, when

they're, What are we saying? What are the messages we need to be giving them?

Well, I think there's a couple of things to think about in terms of like what happens at home and particularly for moms. The first question that I think is important to ask is for yourself As a mom, what relationship do you have with your own body? And what I know is true for a lot of people, particularly moms, is they, moms work very hard to not pass on the type of messages that they inherited. And I do believe we are doing a much better job than we used to. We are getting many more messages. We have

many more varied sizes of role models and of people. It's still very much challenging, but it is better than it used to be. So, and I think a lot of moms are very aware of this. They are aware of the messages and they work very hard to instill in their children, you're beautiful no matter what and work on instilling those. But here's where I see the disconnect. They work very hard on what they say to their children while still having their own very challenging relationship with themselves. So it's kind of like the, you know, do what

I say, not what I do. Our kids know When we have challenging relationship with food and with our bodies, our kids know. This shows up in, if you are a parent who does not want to be in pictures, your kid knows. It's why. Like this doesn't, like you don't not want to be in pictures just for any reason other than you do not like the way that you look. So so there's that like that's a that's a huge 1. If you are eating different food than the rest of your family eats, you know, because you are

trying to lose weight or whatever reason, that is also a very big indicator. If you go to the beach or you go to the pool and you spit and you don't wear a bathing suit, you don't get in the water, or you just simply refuse to go do those things. These are also these are the, the silent, but very simultaneously silent and very loud messages that we send to our children. So I think that's where it's like as a parent, more than what you say to your kids, because I, I really do believe that most parents

are pretty aware. Because it's like, I don't want there's, it's, I often hear, I don't want to give my child the same message that I received from my parents. And a lot of times that message was taking them to a Weight Watchers meeting at 10 years old, or literally saying, if you have seconds, nobody's going to want to marry you. Or, you know, you, you are you as the bigger child, you don't get dessert, but the other kids do. Like those are examples of things that 3040 years ago, parents were doing directly. So I don't think

that is happening as much anymore. It probably still does to some extent. But if you have a challenging relationship with food and with your body, the best thing we can do is work on our own relationships and show our children what that looks like and really be that example rather than just trying to say the right thing. So

if we're when do we get worried? When are we looking at our kid going we need to we need to and there's going to be steps I'm sure We need to have this conversation and then maybe we need to notch it up and maybe now we need some perfect, what are the steps where mom or dad is going, uh-oh, this is not the best.

Yeah, sometimes the steps actually even start before, sometimes food isn't even part of it in the beginning. Sometimes it is. But it's, I would say, if a child is very, if they're, if they're very, like, closed off, if they are, if their behavior changes in a significant way, let's say, especially, especially with like, restrictive type of eating, when you when you're not eating enough to meet your basic like caloric needs in life, certain things are going to happen like your overall mood might change. So let's say you have naturally been like a pretty outgoing person. And

then all of a sudden, not even all of a sudden, but over time, your maybe your affect changes, maybe what you're interested in changes, Maybe you used to be interested in going out and now you're not really anymore. That type of thing. Sometimes that can happen first. But absolutely around food, you can kind of look at, are there changes in the way that, are there changes in the way that they're eating? Are there changes in the foods that they are willing to eat or not willing to eat? Is there an increased or hyper focus on the

type of food, the quality of food? Are you seeing them kind of like, maybe not wanting, if we're talking the restrictive type, are we, is there an increase in, you know, kind of like not wanting to eat or there's more kind of challenges around actual meal time? We can definitely look at significant changes in body size in either direction, really. And also when we're talking about teens, our bodies are designed to get bigger. We are supposed to until we're probably I think about 20 our body is supposed to get bigger. So if you're seeing somebody who

is like exhibiting kind of some concerns around eating, maybe is not eating as much, maybe they're, maybe they're not wanting to talk about food where, you know, there's, you're seeing kind of just certain things around that. And you're not seeing kind of, you're not seeing a change in the body. That may also be a sign. Sometimes, sometimes as what's really interesting in terms of disordered eating and when disordered eating can really pick up for people is especially in women it happens at these periods of life where our hormones are changing significantly. So it might be in

the teen years when maybe a Person is just getting her period so we've got those hormonal changes which come with changes in the body and They can be very they can feel very threatening and it's often when some girls go on their first very restricted diet because they start to see these changes in their body, they don't like it. And they they're kind of trying to prevent it. So sometimes disordered eating can really ramp up at that point. The next point really can be right around college. For similar reasons that, you know, that was for me,

because we're away from our support. If you, if you go away to college, you're away from your support, you're away from, in often cases, your friends, you're really having to kind of adult on your own for the first time and do a lot of things on your own, you're also in charge of your food and your choices for the first time completely. So there's a lot going on there that can also be a heightened time for disordered eating. And interestingly, the next time that there is a large prevalence of disordered eating is in the perimenopause, menopause

time for women. And it's because our hormones are changing so much. I mean, I'm in the middle of this right now. It's like not only do I know my hormones are changing for a lot of reasons, but my body has also, it has changed. We're supposed to gain weight at this time of life. We're supposed to get softer, we are supposed to gain weight, but there's this idea, you see these influencers or whoever on Instagram with these rock hard bodies at 50, and then we think, well, that's what I'm supposed to look like and so all

of this is a problem And so now I've got to go do all of these things to try to change my body and if you think about many of What many women who are in that? Perimenopause menopause time of life Where their own bodies are changing, they likely have children, depending, I mean, we all have children at different times of life, but they might have children who are in the teen or kind of college age years. So not only is their body changing but then if you just imagine kind of the the influence that's happening there

while you there the the mom is now dealing with her changing body and how she's dealing with it and responding to it and reacting to it is very likely going to be it's going to be seen by the child and then the child then you know it's kind of not only do they have that influence, but you also have all the other kids at school. You have everything else that we see in the media, on TV, in the movies, everything else.

Yeah, I hear you. And I'm, yeah, all the conversation I think I have in my own head and I think actually talking to you a couple of weeks ago you said exactly that your body is supposed to do these things and it really it has sat with me since you said that. So I'm glad you said I'm glad you said it again, because my Yeah, my body is, is so different now. And I'm like, Oh my gosh, but but I feel really good. I feel, I, you know, I'm careful with what I'm eating, but I, but

when I'm eating, I feel good about what I'm eating. And when I'm, you know, cheat day, whatever that is. It's not because I feel like it's a cheat day. I feel like the energy around, Oh, I really feel like this pizza today. And I really feel like this glass of wine. And, and it's an energy. It's not A0I shouldn't be doing this. And that's okay. It'll be good for the rest of the week. I don't do that anymore.

Yeah, the energy behind it. Conversation. It's really important. Yes, the energy behind our choices is everything. And even the idea of a cheat day, it's so problematic, right? Because it's like, what are we cheating on? I mean, the rules and the restrictions and the rigidity and all of that, like it just, it sets us up for, it literally sets us up for like these disordered eating patterns. And so even it's like as a as like to go back to the question of As a mom, what do we do? Ask yourself these questions. Am I using any

of these words around food? Am I saying bad or good? I've been good. I've been so good today. I've been so good all week. Am I saying I deserve this? I deserve to have pizza. I've been so good. Am I using things like cheat day? Like, it's a term that so many people have used, but the term in and of itself is problematic. Am I looking at a menu and saying, Oh, well, I really should order this, but I've had a really hard day. So I'm going to get this. Am I saying, well, I should be

good, but I'm going to be bad and I'll be better tomorrow. Like, you know, like just even kind of like those types of things, the way that we talk about food matters because all of those things, what they do is they create morality around food. It's good and it's bad. And if there are good choices and bad choices, then what we do is we end up saying, well, if I didn't make the good choice, then I must be bad. We personalize it and we then think I'm bad for doing that. Now, I mean, if I ate

pizza all day, every day, I would just feel gross. I just I would not feel good in my body, but that doesn't make it bad food.

So

the way that I love to talk about food and like eating like just decisions around eating is, is is I kind of have a threefold approach, nurturing, supportive, and sustainable. So is this choice nurturing, nurturing might be, it might be ice cream on a warm summer day. I mean, that may be very nurturing to me. It might be something completely different. Like nurturing does not have to mean, you know, it is 100% healthy and whole and all those things, right? Nurturing? Is it supportive? Is it supportive for whatever I am looking for food to do for

me in this moment? Because I think food can absolutely can and does serve a lot of purposes. Sometimes people say like, I just want food to be fuel and that's it. Nothing else. But you know, I personally, I think that food has a lot of places. Yes, food absolutely is fuel. Food does fuel a lot of what we do in life. And that's really important. And food is also pleasurable. Food is for gathering and for celebration and for enjoyment. It, it absolutely can be all of those things. So for me, it's nurturing, supportive. And the last

1 is so important, and it's sustainable. Can I eat this way for the rest of my life? I'm not on a plan that I can only do for 30 days, or 75 days, or 3 weeks until then I'm off the wagon or whatever, it's like sustainable. I literally, no matter what, no matter if I'm having the best day ever or the worst day ever, like this is what I can do kind of for myself. It's really like that supportive and sustainable approach.

Yeah, and I liked even how you started the whole conversation where you're in your head. Yes. Whereas when you really think about eating, And the same as what I just said, it's like, how does it make me feel? And, and literally, I could, yep, go to McDonald's, and I could have fries and a burger. And I know, in an hour, I'm going to feel like a bag of crap. And if I realize that, but can I go to a really nice gourmet burger place? Can I have just this great, you know, just to kind of satisfy

what I'm feeling like at that moment? And I'm not going to feel this mound of regret, because I'm not sitting in the washroom with Tums. But yeah, I like that. And I think that's conversations to have at home. What do you literally, like we say, what do you feel like? What do you feel like? What do you really think about? What do you feel like? And that's I think is so important night love. I just want to respect the time of this, but I also want to say.

I want to add 1 thing to that though real quick in terms of like conversations to have at home. So I absolutely agree with what you're saying. And here's the thing that I think parents could do beautifully with their children. It's like, help me like really understanding around like food choices. Why do you like this food? What is it? What is it about this food that you really like? So it might be so because sometimes, especially, especially if we're trying to make choices, because, well, it's just the least amount of calories, right? Like this is, if

I eat this, then I'll weigh less tomorrow, right? Like sometimes that's the decision. And if that's the decision, we want to know that. But it's like, if we can really understand why are we making these choices? What, huh, okay, so like, what do you feel like? Oh, I feel like a salad. How come? What is it about a salad that would be like really amazing to you? And it might be, ah, I just love some fresh produce. Right now, this is in season. And, you know, when I eat a salad afterwards, like I just feel really

good. I feel energized, whatever it is, right? Or if and if that's the answer, it's like amazing. If the answer is, well, I'm afraid that if I Like what I really want is this, but I'm afraid if I eat this, then I won't be able to do this or I'm trying to fit into my prom dress, you know, because prom is in 2 weeks, or whatever, like that right there is going to kind of be able to show you what are the decisions. It might be like, Oh, well, I really want. I really want to eat

like I feel like let's say it's like fried chicken and mashed potatoes and biscuits and macaroni and cheese. Okay, amazing. How come? Like, what is it about that? Like, what sounds really good? You know, like, what do you like about it? Like, really, I love for anyone to really understand, like, with your food choices. It's like, what do you like to eat? And why?

So

many people that I work with, they don't even know what they like to eat. They're just like, I have just eaten these foods for years, because somebody told me to, they were on a list. They're like approved by any diet I've ever been on. This is just like what I eat. And it's like, Okay, well, let's get really like, do you even like that food? If you do? Why? What do you like about it? Is it the texture? Is it the flavor? Do you like this brand? Or do you like this brand? Oh, I don't even

know. Like, I've never really given myself those options. These are great conversations that and if we're if we're back to the fried chicken and the mashed potatoes and the and the everything. All right, like, we understand why. Okay, great. And then we start to think about, I'd love to think about how I'm going to feel when I eat something before, during and after. So it's like, I'm all for well, actually, I'm not for fried chicken and all of those things, because I would just not feel good. But I might have some of something, but really with

the, I want to enjoy this. I want to enjoy the anticipation of it. I want to enjoy it while I'm eating, and I want to feel really good afterwards as well. And there is a place where you can find that enjoyment in all of the areas and then you're not in the, like, I feel gross, I ate too much, I'm over full. Like, If you really stay connected, you have that intention, that purpose, you really are eating what you truly want, listening to your body's wisdom. It is so possible to have this amazing connected relationship with

yourself and with food.

Yeah, that's so good. I just wanna say 1 more thing, because this is such a sticking point with me, is commenting on people's bodies. It makes me crazy. Oh, he's gotten bigger. Oh, he's gotten smaller. Oh, look, I've lost 10 pounds. Oh, he or she or whatever, like just commenting, period. Yeah.

You talk to me. Basically, the, you know, I really learned about I learned about the dangers of this, I would say through my I was I went through intensive outpatient therapy, 2 rounds. And in my time in that treatment was when I really just learned about the dangers of commenting on bodies. Any comment at all, whether we're talking, whether we comment on somebody who's lost weight, whether we comment on somebody who's gained weight. Number 1, we never have any idea what is going on with anybody. But when I think about for myself specifically, when I was

at the height of my restriction and my disordered eating, I received the most compliments on my body. So here's what happens is you receive these compliments on your body, you're doing this stuff, restrictively eating, doing things that literally are so like detrimental physically to your body, then you receive these compliments, you look so great. Oh my gosh, I wish my arms looked like that. What are you doing? So then what do I hear is keep going. It's like that reinforcement and this happened to me and I have heard this from so many people. It's like, then

we get this. It's like this affirmation to continue with the disordered eating And then it just continues and continues. And then at some point, if like for me, then the binging then comes back because there's this, it's the pendulum effect of that is just natural for us. Then the weight gain starts coming back on and then there's just this fear. Oh my gosh, now I'm getting bigger. What are people gonna say? Like it's this, It's so problematic. Commenting on bodies for any reason is never, it's never

a good idea. Because you don't know, you don't know. Right, if I'm sitting on the couch and I'm listening to 2 people over here talk about, oh, she's gotten bigger. Oh, it's still filtering in my head. So there's still kids sitting on their couches listening to mom and mom or mom and dad or dad and dad at the kitchen table saying, Oh my God, see, oh, They're listening. Like, we just need to put a dead stop right here. No more.

No, and the message is that the size of your body matters. And it doesn't. You are so much more than a body. But we keep getting these messages from external, from other people that the size and shape of your body is of this utmost important. And so then we place all this importance on it. And then what do we know to do to change the shape of our body? Oh, food. So then it's just so inextricably linked. Yeah.

I just, I love this conversation. I think it's so important. I want people to share this everywhere because I feel like even in like my last few years of teaching, it was so prevalent in high school. And I don't know if it was more of a trigger from COVID or it just got more noticed. Doesn't matter what it was, it's there and we need to start talking about it. We need to stop the stigma around it. We need to start having the right conversations instead of the wrong conversations. And yeah, it's just, I feel like, and

this is not, I'm just going to say this 1 quick thing. This is not solely female gender.

No, not at all. Absolutely. So I think absolutely it impacts it impacts both men and women and men, it impacts men more than we know. Men don't really have a lot of times kind of a place to go to talk about these things. But just like women see all of these ads and these women in bikinis and whatever, men see the muscle, you know, the muscley people on the magazines and in the movies and everything else, they absolutely body image impacts both men and, and women, very, on a very intense level in both cases. And I

just want to say 1 more thing in terms of the conversations to have. 1 more kind of like, like a kind of just a warning, especially for parents, is What we want to do is understand. We want to understand our kids. Help me understand why you're making these choices. Help me understand why you're afraid to eat that. Help me understand why you're not eating the lunch that I sent you or whatever. Help me understand and having that really understanding, that curiosity, that openness is so important. The warning is we do not want to give them an

indication of you're wrong, you're broken, there's something wrong with you, why won't you just eat, why don't you just stop eating? Why don't you just just don't do that? Just you're beautiful. Why can't you just see? Why can't you just see how beautiful you are? Those things don't help. So we don't they already I can tell you already they already feel broken. They already feel not good enough. They already feel challenged or damaged or something in some way. And so you want to be sure that you're not creating any more feelings of less than or wrong

or broken, because they are likely already feeling that in some way or another, or they wouldn't be kind of having some of these challenges. So what we want to do is understand. We want that compassion, that understanding, that empathy. And then through that understanding, okay, now let's find you the support and help, if that's kind of what we decide is that next step. But we don't wanna go at it from this place of, why don't you just do something different? Why can't you just eat more? Why can't you just eat a cheeseburger? Like that is not

helpful.

I'm so glad we're finishing like this because help me understand I think is the mic drop like you've got all these golden nuggets today They're so helpful, but help me understand is probably the best way to start any conversation

any Conversation I

love that. I actually had goosebumps when you said I'm like there it is. There it is. There it is right there. I love it. Thank you so much. This is just so important and we can drop into the show notes any resources you have. I'm sure there's lots of places we can call talk to you books. We can read I'll put it all in the show notes Where can we find you Jane?

Sounds good. I would say on my website is Jane Pilger calm a great resource for Me specifically if you if binge eating is of concern for you or a loved 1. I have a podcast called binge breakthrough. And even if I would say even if binging I actually received so much feedback that you know, binging isn't actually my thing, But I have challenges and struggles with food. If you have any challenges or struggles with food, the binge breakthrough podcast is a great resource for you.

What a great thing to have out there. Thank you for all the work you do. I really appreciate you dropping in. Hopefully we can just have another conversation because I don't think this is over. And thank you for listening to Teen Minds Redefined. Please share this, please share this because people need to hear this. People need this help. And Jane is doing beautiful work and we need to get it out there. So thank you so much for listening.