Episode 4: Confronting Body Image Issues and Eating Disorders: An Interview with Jen Scott, Dietitian and Run Coach
The societal obsession with weight loss and ideal body images has taken a toll on many of us, leading to unhealthy behaviors and even eating disorders. The podcast episode offers a deep dive into these pressing issues.
The guest of the episode, Jen, is a certified run coach, clinical sports dietitian, and an accomplished endurance athlete. She opens up about her personal struggles with body image issues and eating disorders, including her battle with anorexia and orthorexia. Her journey towards self-acceptance is both heartfelt and inspiring, highlighting the resilience of the human spirit.
One of the key themes of the conversation revolves around societal health standards and our unhealthy obsession with weight loss. The discussion brings to light the complex dynamics of body image during different life stages, such as pregnancy. This highlights how societal pressures can significantly influence our perception of our bodies and potentially lead to harmful behaviors.
A significant part of the discussion is devoted to exploring the world of running and its impact on body image. Jen debunks the harmful misconception that 'lighter is faster,' emphasizing the importance of focusing on overall health and performance instead.
In the context of eating disorders, Jen shares valuable insights on breaking free from restrictive behaviors. She emphasizes the importance of focusing on the overall quality of life and the dangers of ignoring our body's hunger cues. These insights are particularly crucial in a society that often equates thinness with health and success.
As the conversation wraps up, the importance of body acceptance and listening to our body's signals is emphasized. Jen shares how she redefined her relationship with food and her body, providing listeners with a beacon of hope and resilience. Her story is a powerful reminder that we are more than our reflection in the mirror, and that self-acceptance is an integral part of our well-being.
In conclusion, the podcast episode provides an enlightening and thought-provoking perspective on body image, eating disorders, and self-acceptance. Through Jen's personal experiences and professional insights, listeners are offered valuable strategies to overcome their body image struggles and embrace self-acceptance.
The journey towards self-acceptance is not always easy, but with the right support, understanding, and perspective, it is indeed possible. As Jen aptly puts it, it's time to start focusing on the quality of life we are living versus the kind of life we want to have. It's time to embrace self-acceptance and start listening to our bodies.
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Jess: 0:01
Hello, friend, and welcome to Sturdy Girl, a podcast focused on strength, not size, where you'll hear conversations around healthy body image, cultivating confidence and being a resilient human in both body and mind. Sturdy Girl is the podcast where we shift the focus away from your appearance and on to living the big, rad life you deserve. Hello, my Sturdy Humans and welcome to episode 4 of Sturdy Girl. Before we get started, I just want to say thank you for listening. This was our very first Sturdy Girl interview, our very first experience with recording on Zoom and Zoom Audio, so thank you for bearing with us. The audio is not my favorite, but still a fantastic episode. The second thing I want to mention is that Megan is not joining us for today's episode, but she will be back next week as we jump into everything about self-confidence and, let's be honest, she's probably off riding a bike somewhere right now anyways. So today's episode is all about body image, eating disorders and disordered eating. It is a fantastic episode and we are joined by my friend, Jen, who is a clinical sports dietitian of almost 20 years, a certified run coach and an accomplished endurance athlete with multiple Boston marathons under her belt. Okay, I think that concludes all my little notes before we get started. I hope you enjoy the episode. Let's dive in. Hello Jen, welcome, Hi, thanks for having me. I am so stoked that you get to be our first Sturdy Girl guest. Jen and I have been on a podcast before together. I guess it's been like a year and a half ago.
Jen: 1:31
Gosh, I can't even remember everything, since COVID is a blur.
Jess: 1:34
So I don't. It was somewhere in that COVID timeline. So I'm like, yeah, that was it. I would love to have you talk about your body image story. If you want to talk about running, you start us off wherever you want.
Jen: 1:47
Okay, it's kind of all tied together. So, yeah, as our story ends up being right. So when I was 17 is when I really started to struggle with my body image. I think most teenagers do. I had gained some weight, like after the tennis season. I was playing tennis and I know on one of your Instagram posts you posted something how we all have that experience where someone made some comment about our bodies Mine was. My best friend's older cousin said that I was built like a brick shithouse and I don't know if he met that good or bad. Right, because some people are like, well, that probably was just a compliment, but I did not take it that way.
Jess: 2:27
That's akin to like the well. Aren't you just a sturdy girl, right yeah?
Jen: 2:32
So in my brain I process that as oh, I'm getting you know, chunky, I look like a brick shithouse.
Jess: 2:38
So how did you even internalize that? Because I've heard that phrase at this point many times. I've had family members call me that, but the first time I heard it I was like what does that even mean? Okay, I'm sturdy, I'm large, I'm smelly, I'm what? Like what is that? Yeah?
Jen: 2:57
So in my head I automatically just pictured myself as being this big rectangular shaped like port-a-potty, like that's what my body looks like, and that's not a very pleasant, positive image, right? That's not an attractive thing to feel like. So I remember I spent that summer between my sophomore and junior year like running every afternoon in the summer. And this isn't like in Phoenix. I grew up in Arizona, phoenix heat. I'm really desperately trying to lose weight and I didn't really lose that much weight that summer. But my junior year of high school started. I had tons of AP classes, totally stressed out, my stomach hurt all the time and I stopped eating because my stomach hurt. And there was no connection there in my head that if I stopped eating because my stomach hurt I'd lose weight. But that's what happened. And then I started to get a lot of positive comments from peers and adults, my PE teacher, and it was like oh, so I lost weight.
Jess: 4:01
This is what I'm supposed to be doing, yeah.
Jen: 4:04
If I'm doing these comments, I wasn't eating. Yep, I was sick and I lost this weight. Now I'm getting positive comments, so I just need to maintain this, and that means hardly eating anything at all, and that is where my eating disorder came from, and I ended up with having anorexia nervosa, which also became orthorexia, because with that interest, you know, I became obsessed with nutrition. So when I went to college, I decided I wanted to major in nutrition, and orthorexia, which is the obsession with eating perfectly healthy, became part of that as well. And so, from the ages of 17 to 23, I had an active eating disorder all through college, where I was going to school to be a dietitian and there's actually some research on that. They say 10%, but I think it's much higher than that of people going to school to be a dietitian have an eating disorder.
Jess: 4:59
I was going to say that that tracks, because then your mindset, while you're going to school and you're obsessed with nutrition, then you're saying like I'm obsessed, it's healthy, I'm making good choices and almost perpetuates it yes, yeah, yeah.
Jen: 5:17
But I ended up my senior year of college I was like I need help. So I called an eating disorder center. I was like hi, I want to start treatment. And they were like what? Because I guess people don't usually call themselves in. So yeah, I went through intense outpatient treatment and through that I had to deal with a lot of the mental part of it and that's what I think helped me a lot later as a dietitian to realize that an eating disorder isn't just about eating, it isn't just eat more. People always will say that when they say people have ears, can you just eat more? Can't you just stop that? And it's not that easy because a lot of it is mental, it's very ingrained, it's the neural pathways, there's the reward system. It's all connected and it's definitely connected to body image. And that was the hardest part for me was trying to disconnect my worth from my weight and my body image, because it got ingrained when I was 17.
Jess: 6:19
Yeah, when you have those comments made about your body after you've been trying these basically extreme measures, right, was there something that happened that made you ready to dial that number to start going through treatment? Or was there a catalyst? Or was it just one day that you're like how did I get here?
Jen: 6:37
I think, yeah, I was pretty aware I had an eating disorder by my sophomore year of college and I just kept trying to. I can fix this myself. I have the knowledge, I can do this myself. And I couldn't do it myself, I would start to you know.
Jess: 6:51
Even if you had the knowledge, it's one of those things Blake calls it being inside the fishbowl, or you can't read the label from inside the bottle, right? So even if you knew oh, I can, I know how to get myself out of this you don't have the same tools and levels of support to actually do it. Yeah, yeah.
Jen: 7:09
So I was just tired of going around in circles and it being what consumed like all of my internal dialogue and my thoughts.
Jess: 7:17
That's huge. So you were saying you went through treatment realizing that a lot of it was undoing kind of your perception of self, body image, all of those things. So when you went through that outpatient treatment, do they help on that end of things with body image and a lot of?
Jen: 7:32
those components. Yeah, so I had a dietician I checked in with once a week, but then I had a therapist I saw twice a week and that's what her and I worked on was just trying to replace the internal dialogue in my head and everyone's different, so it was just different techniques, different things, and a lot of it was just doing it because the big fear was, if I gain weight, then people aren't going to love me or like me, and it was reminding myself that that isn't true and I just need to do it, whether or not I believe that. I feel like that's the hardest thing about eating disorder treatment is that we have to do these things that we don't believe, and that's a really hard thing to do. Like, if I gain weight, I'm that's one thing I hear, even with my clients who have eating disorders Well, what if I can't stop gaining weight? What if my body gets so big? What if I get, you know, yeah, fat and there's like, well, what if you do? Your worth isn't connected to that, but it's really hard to believe that until you start doing it and you often just have to do it, scared, and Do it even if you hate it and don't want to do it. It's really weird.
Jess: 8:45
That's such an interesting perspective too, because I think about from the perspective of just body image, whereas eating disorders are are much more compounded in their complexity. But thinking about just body image, of that sometimes cognitive dissonance Between where you are and what you believe, and then telling yourself these other things when you're like I don't believe that yet, or the the rationale of Logically I know this is true, but right now, emotionally Absolutely not, and trying to reconcile the two. I think that's such an interesting point too. And then talking about what if I gain weight? And then that that response because I I've heard this too in just my own coaching clients of well, jessica, if I stop restricting, if I Change the way I eat so I'm not tracking every single macro and weighing everything, I'm just giving up like isn't that just me giving up? Aren't I gonna gain a ton of weight? What if I gain a ton of weight? What if you do? What if that happens? Are you gonna be any less of a person? Are you gonna be able to still do the things you enjoy? Show up for yourself, the way you want to engage with your family and friends, the way that matters to you? Mm-hmm, what's more important? What quality of life are your current choices giving right versus like? What kind of quality of life Do you want to have? Mm-hmm?
Jen: 10:03
Yeah, and a lot of it too, is just in society, everything is geared towards weight loss and being lean, not over eating, restricting. That's everything you see on social media. The most popular posts right are the people who are lean, muscular. They're commended. So of course, everyone's afraid of not looking that way or not being that way, and I totally all for being comfortable in your body and feeling strong in your body, and I'll get clients who will be like I don't fit in any of my clothes and I can't afford to buy a new wardrobe. Totally understand that, and I think there is ways to change your body composition and to do those things in a way that is healthy. I feel like I should put a warning on that because I am really careful with screening people before we go that way about their history. Yeah.
Jess: 10:52
I mean, and that's that's just saying essentially, you are not anti changing your body, not anti, right? It's looking at the perspective of weight loss. Body comp changes are completely separate from Healthy body image, from body image growth, and I think that that is such an important thing to recognize that if you don't feel good in your body, it's examining that I don't feel good in my body. It doesn't just have to do with your physical appearance. A lot of it is adjusting that relationship with yourself. Right. I completely resonate and agree with what you're saying because I think it feels like in in the media not just social media, but media in general there's two camps. There's anti diet, anti changing your body, anti everything on that end of things. And then there's the people that are huge proponents of losing weight and smaller bodies or better bodies and having that middle ground of If you can track food in a healthful way, great. If weighing yourself on a regular basis is something that helps you to have more Information, to make informed decisions about your health, great. But if those are triggers for you, maybe don't do them having that differentiation, because that's something where I'm like I don't fall into either of those camps. There's a middle, there's a both, and here yeah, and I always too.
Jen: 12:07
I don't ever tell anyone what weight I think they should be. I think a healthy weight is whatever weight you can maintain by eating a good amount, being able to enjoy Social gatherings, being able to hang out with your family and enjoy desserts and not beat yourself up and then still be Active. Have a healthy relationship with exercise.
Jess: 12:30
Absolutely. It isn't a specific number, it's being able to have those relationships with food, with exercise and something that's sustainable. I think that's one thing too. I have a good friend who's doing a pretty Restricted diet. You let them make their choices and I'm not here to judge, but the type of diet that they're on is super low carb and they're on this specific meal plan to lose weight and have they lost weight? Yes, but then my question is when you come off that, is it sustainable? Like, right now, energy is low so they're not working out, or if they are, it's very limited and I'm like how is that sustainable? You're not able to engage in the activities that you love or enjoy. You're not able to consistently go and eat at gatherings the way that you enjoy. When you get off this diet and you return to whatever sense of normalcy you decide to engage in, are you gonna gain the weight back that you lost? Like is it?
Jen: 13:20
sustainable. I think a lot of people go into weight loss or restrictive diet thinking it'll fix their body image and it usually doesn't. The root issue Right is your body image and how you perceive an experience and what you tell yourself about your body.
Jess: 13:36
Exactly, that's exactly. It is in that relationship versus your actual physical appearance. Now there are cases, too, where maybe your physical appearance and your size and body composition is Impeding your ability to run a race as comfortably or have the endurance that you want, and changing body composition could improve your body image. There's cases for that, but more often than not, it is improving your relationship with yourself and your body image. That's the answer versus that restrictive diet. Okay, this is awesome. I'm super enjoying this discussion so far, thank you. So going back to your journey through high school into college eating disorder, going to school to become a dietitian, putting yourself through treatment and kind of coming out with probably a really diverse tool belt of skills to help your own clients.
Jen: 14:26
Mm-hmm, I think we just went way off when I was talking about gaining weight, right? Yeah, I know, sorry so it's really easy to go in so many different directions, but I ended up gaining quite a bit of weight in recovery and actually was a good amount over my Weight before I even started trying to lose weight. So that was mentally Really hard. I think that's where the body image and learning how much body image and what you think and tell yourself I really, you know came to understand that a little bit better because even though I went through recovery and all those behaviors were gone, I was now in a body that I hated and I didn't feel comfortable in. And, like I was saying, with eating disorder, people are afraid what if I gain weight? What if I keep gaining weight? And that's kind of where I ended up. But the other thing was internally I didn't like the way I looked, but nothing changed in my relationships. My husband at that point you know his attitude, his love for me didn't change. The way my friends interacted with me didn't change. Nothing changed externally. It helped me more with the internal dialogue that it doesn't, it doesn't matter, and it also helped me kind of come more to the Inclusion that I don't have to like my body but I need to respect my body.
Jess: 15:41
Yes, I like that. Would you put yourself in any particular like body image Camp as far as body acceptance, body neutrality, body positivity, anything Like those that resonate, or is it just kind of like it is what it is?
Jen: 15:58
I think probably mostly neutral.
Jess: 16:00
Yeah, that makes sense. I just came off of recording episode 3, all about whether or not body Positivity is the answer, and with you cluing in and saying at the end of the day, it's about body respect and that is something that comes across in every single type of body image. Every bit of research on body positivity, acceptance, neutrality, body image, flexibility, every single one of them is like at the end of the day, you have to respect your body. You have to appreciate and care for your body, nourish it, give it the rest it needs, hydrate those things, that self-care piece. You don't have to love it. Yeah, so I appreciate that. Where would you say your journey is at now or where did it take you? I mean, you are such a badass runner. That's technically how we met, right? So Instagram? like yeah yeah, all of our. All of our running posts all the time. Do you feel like did your body image Flexuate or change through your running journey, or do you want to share anything about your running journey at all?
Jen: 16:57
Oh yeah, I started running around the same time 16 17 with my dad. My dad was a marathon runner and I would do some of his shorter runs with him. But then my running definitely got entangled in my eating disorder. As a way to keep an energy deficit it was something I would use to make up for maybe eating more than I thought I should have. It definitely was not a positive relationship until I went through recovery and then I was able to have a relationship with running where I was doing it because I wanted to and because I enjoyed it and the idea of burning calories off or trying to maintain weight just totally went out the window. And that really changed my relationship with running in a way, positive way, way more healthy, because before I had to run every day and I didn't. Then I stress out major anxiety and after it was like oh, it's fine, you know.
Jess: 17:55
I miss a couple days work. That is huge. Now, when you were going through treatment and through the initial parts of recovery, did you stop running to be able to work on that relationship with how you came back to it?
Jen: 18:09
Yeah, probably. Let's say six or eight months I didn't run an exercise was pretty limited.
Jess: 18:14
That must have been such an interesting journey in so many ways that I don't want to minimize any of that. But just thinking about what running means to us now and how and how we use that, that would be such an to to go through something where I don't know about for you, but for me, running for the better part of a decade was such an integral part of my identity. Yeah, that too.
Jen: 18:36
I will share with my eating disorder clients a lot. They'll talk about how hard it is and I'm like I totally. I mean I had suicidal thoughts. It was not easy because all of a sudden my running's gone, I'm gaining weight. Everything is bad quote, unquote bad. That is happening. It was horrible at the time but it was necessary to break that connection that my birth is tied to my running that make my water, yeah, and so and it totally gives me empathy to like. Eating disorders have the highest morbidity mortality rate.
Jess: 19:11
People die more from eating disorders than any other mental illness and I totally can see why it can feel like living hell when you're going through it, my mom struggled with anorexia for the better part of 20 years and that's kind of the environment and when we talk about how our body image story is shaped, that was a big part of it. For me was was seeing her struggle so much of it, through so much of it and to see, even as a kid, understanding that it was something that she could control, how much that control piece comes into play and being able to work through changing those thoughts. And that's not that you're taking away control, but there's other decisions to be made and there's ways to nourish your body and show you can be in control of the food you're eating. But is it taking care of your body as well and being respectful and nourishing in the same space? It's so much more than your comment earlier. When people are like, oh, just eat more, why don't you just eat more? Oh, what is eating disorder recovery? Is it just people making you eat food and you're like there's so much mental health component to that because it's behaviors, it's the piece of I think you might have said this before we started recording just about it being like trauma as kind of the trigger to that and being a big part of it.
Jen: 20:20
I definitely found and I think it's pretty common people who have experienced trauma. Often we see people who have experienced like abuse as a child or sexual abuse or sexual assault at any time, and eating disorder often will follow. And it's the person's kind of their way of trying to take that control and also because that was something that happened to their bodies, it's something they're trying to do to protect their bodies. Yeah, that makes a lot of sense, that protective behavior. And then it's like most eating disorders do. The behavior start with trying to protect your body or control it, and then it gets connected to body image and then also with the trauma, right, if you start to gain weight, then is that going to make you vulnerable again? Or if your body starts to look at certain ways, that going to make you vulnerable again, and so that's a whole nother level of things to work through too. It's not just now eating disorder, recovery and undoing those thoughts and, do you know, trying to work through the trauma.
Jess: 21:21
It's working through what's the root of all of that, because that eating disorder didn't just spring up right one day. It came from somewhere, whether it was a series of events or a particular trauma. Yeah, I was just thinking about that whole experience and learning to undo, because you're talking about protecting your body, but I was thinking too, when you talk about the trauma piece of it, how much of it is a responsive, like control. But also I don't want to think about or process or cope with what happened. It was huge, it was big, it was overwhelming and instead I'm going to focus my energy on food how much, when, where, what and putting my energy into that.
Jen: 22:00
Yep, that's exactly what happens. I've seen people who are trying to do go through trauma therapy. They'll have a hard session and the way they deal with the heightened anxiety and the heightened feelings is to double down on the eating disorder behaviors, because that's what their body has come to connect, a way to restore peace within themselves or to the cold. Yeah, on healthy way, but a way to cope. Yeah, and I've also found that if they're triggered by trauma, working through trauma therapy or something traumatic happens, there will automatically start to feel uncomfortable in their bodies, which will then trigger the restriction. And so that's really interesting to how your brain will automatically trigger the discomfort in your body in order to trigger you to restrict. It's just this whole neural pathway to protect yourself.
Jess: 22:51
I like that you said that, because one of the things that I've talked a lot about is body image disruptions. So not necessarily people with an eating disorder, but a person in a body, good body image, healthy body, bad body, whatever. There are disruptions that come up from scrolling social media and the comparison piece crap that our family says to us putting on clothes we're going to be getting all our pants back out soon as the weather gets cooler and their sweaters and maybe putting this on and they feel a little bit differently and those feels that arise. These body image disruptions are. How do you respond? It's like swimming in an ocean and those disruptions are like waves. It's always big waves. How do you learn to like effectively swim or surf and ride those waves? And one of the big ways that people respond is those kind of self protective measures of well, I'm feeling this way, so if I take an action, I can fix it. So that action can be like starting a new diet. Maybe we're doubling down and we're restricting that diet. It's buying new clothes, it's getting a new hair style. It's like quick fixes. But I never thought about how that could eventually extrapolate into when you're struggling with an eating disorder that turns into that quick fix behavior is like, okay, I'm doubling down on this diet. Such an interesting connection, thank you, yeah, yeah, Now you've worked with athletes, with runners, with all of that. Have you seen any connection or correlation or I don't know what you want to call it with runners and body image, cause that's something that I can totally speak on, but I'd love to hear from your perspective too.
Jen: 24:17
Something I experienced, too, when I first returned to running was the feeling that I'm too large, my body's too big, I don't look like a runner, I'm too big to be a runner. And thinking of the elite two and a half hour runners, we just automatically compare bodies or think, you know we need to know the certain way.
Jess: 24:35
Yeah, I mean, they give you the statistics, right? Your elite marathon runner is five, seven and 130 pounds. So there you go. There's your automatic starting point for comparison. Right? It's like I don't look like a runner, I'm not boat like a runner.
Jen: 24:47
Sometimes people tell me that they want to be in a smaller body so they can be faster or feel more comfortable in their bodies, and often what the first thing I'll do is just see if they're even eating enough first.
Jess: 25:00
Yeah, and you're like I appreciate your thought, but I have questions.
Jen: 25:04
first, yeah, what I found is, once we start working on feeling better and they see that they can actually feel better by feeling, by eating more, and they actually get faster that way, usually those thoughts go right out the window.
Jess: 25:19
I had a coach that told me exactly this. I was a couple of years into my running journey and I'd started running around the same time that it also started a fairly restrictive diet. There was concern over having a gluten intolerance and whatever else I did, like a food sensitivity test, which is a whole nother load of whatever. But I had lost 50 pounds over the course of a couple of years. Changed diet, changed a lot of my helpful behaviors in life, so a lot of good changes. But I definitely had put running in the place of like. This is what I have control over. This is my healthy lifestyle piece. Loved running, completely identified as it. So I hired a coach. It had been going well and I had been talking about ways to make improvements. Now, a lot of times, that coach is going to say okay, jess, you have a half marathon on the books and we're working on these types of speed workouts and balancing out the easy runs here, and that let's look at how's your recovery, how's your sleep right, those kinds of things. But the first thing this coach said to me is well, jessica, how much do you weigh? Let's talk about changing your diet so that you can lose, like I don't know, seven to 10 pounds and then you'll get faster. No discussion about anything else. No conversation about tweaking your programming or anything else. It was just straight to maybe it's time to lose some weight Now. Granted, you're talking about not looking like a runner. I am not the like a runner. Like we talked about having the family members that calls brick shit houses, mm-hmm, that was a really big struggle for me too, was it was overcoming that? But yes, I had the exact same words, like I want to lose weight, to get faster, because mainstream media tells you that the less you weigh, the faster you'll go. Yeah, but then you have to ask it what cost, right?
Jen: 27:01
So I've had a couple of cross country high school girls that I've worked with and I had one who she came to me relative energy deficiency, menstrual dysfunction, underweight weight and she wanted to get better. Within the first month she implemented everything, gained the weight back that she needed to, her period came back Like she was all in it. Totally pretty amazing, right. I usually don't see people go in and take it and all of it. Yeah, and she was feeling good. It's pretty rare that people exgold and do really well like she did. But then she had two races where her time was slower and then even slower. The coach, he calls her mom and says we noticed that she's gained some weight and I think this is what's making her slower. So then the mom calls me and is really upset, like did we do the right thing? And I was like of course you did the right thing. He's wrong. Internally I wanted to say all sorts of really horrible things about this person. I wanted to punch a wall. I was so mad. I was like, if she's fatigued and running slower and she said her legs just won't turn over, let's get her tested. Let's get her iron levels tested.
Jess: 28:11
There's more to the story here.
Jen: 28:13
Yes, yeah, and guess what? Iron deficiency Got her on iron supplement. Eight weeks she ran a 17 minute 5K, maintained her weight, eating everything else. I was like shove it up your butt, coach. Yes, you know, and so that thought lighter is faster. I mean in cases of professional male athletes, that the data was done on, sure, but I think across the board.
Jess: 28:45
If you're training at some kind of incredibly elite level and you have looked at every other factor under the sun, sure, maybe that's the key to your extra 0.01% improvement. But for your recreational athlete, for Gen Pop doesn't even enter into the equation.
Jen: 29:03
And it's what A matter of seconds Like we're going to destroy our relationship with food in our body just so we can have a couple seconds. I don't think it's worth it. I won't ever think it's worth it.
Jess: 29:15
One thing too when you're talking about working with high school athletes, I have read so freaking much about body image lately and body image struggles start with kids as young as five, which blows my mind and thinking about this high schooler. So they've had some time for body image feels and perspectives to develop, but they're still young enough that they took what you said and were like I want to be healthy, I want to improve here and implemented. I'd be so curious to ask that person about their body image and that perspective. I'm just like thinking aloud. I would love eventually to get into middle schools or high schools and have conversations around body image, because so much of these conversations on this podcast so far and going forward are unlearning so many things that we have been taught or internalized about our bodies that if you get ahead of that in middle school or high school, how much more of a badass and resilient human can you be? How much more time and energy would you spend on things that you love, impacting the world in positive ways, versus the time and energy we spend worrying about our appearance or fitting in or looking like a runner, looking like a power lifter, whatever. So total side tangent. But there's three girl goals. I'm just putting this out there.
Jen: 30:31
When I went through recovery, I didn't feel like a runner, or I looked like a runner, and so I didn't go to races or anything for a long time.
Jess: 30:39
I had my first and second kids during that time too, and so it was really hard to go out to races and working and a parent, also another like big body image piece, though too, I would assume, going through having kids and having your body change through that period of time.
Jen: 30:54
There's seeing eating disorder behaviors increase in pregnancy and pregnant women and again, I think it's partly due to what we see on social media. Yes, see women who are pregnant, who don't even look like they're pregnant. Every single person's body is totally different. I think we need to respect that in your body has its own individual needs, its own individual way. It's going to carry a baby or gain weight or be healthy yet so anyways. But for me it was actually was even more healing to see my body get big and pregnant and then see it change. Yeah, I don't, I just helped me be more comfortable in my body.
Jess: 31:30
I guess Do you feel like there was more appreciation. I think so, and they were like holy crap, look what my body can do.
Jen: 31:36
Yeah, and just that your body is going to be different sizes through different periods of your life.
Jess: 31:42
Absolutely. Our bodies are constantly changing. They're made to change. Our body image perspective is also going to change too with the way our bodies change. So when I asked you about what kind of body image resonates with you most, some seasons are neutrality, some seasons are acceptance, some seasons are learning, the flexibility of showing up in a way that says I don't really like my body right now, but I can still do the things I like.
Jen: 32:06
I learned to after all, that just how much, much more free time I had when I wasn't trying to count all my calories, worry about what I ate, worry about when I was going to run something miles I needed to to burn something off, and I think I just wasted a lot of my life during those years worrying about those things. I think it helped me enjoy running even more and to be able to focus more on the performance or maybe having other goals and running like chasing Boston qualifying times or trying to break 20 minutes on a 5k. It's a lot easier to focus on those things when you're not bogged down with all of the negative, disordered eating thoughts, says the person with a Boston marathon poster behind you.
Jess: 32:50
I love it when you can turn towards those mastery and performance related goals that aren't tied to body image. One thing when you're talking about figuring out how many miles you need to run to burn off the food you ate, it wasn't that long ago that social media all the time would be like you know, you need to run 73.6 minutes to burn off this cupcake, like it was a thing, and I entered running in that period of time and that's one positive I guess I can say is I don't really see that Maybe I've curated my social media fates not to see it, but actually that's not as prevalent in the social media space. There's more of the conversation around eat the food to fuel your body and go for the Jesús right back. That's a nice shift to see.
Jen: 33:31
Yeah, I always see it come out again around Thanksgiving. Oh, that's true. Well, I have an anti that message on my Instagram that I throw up everything's good. Ok, we'll be sure to share it far and wide when we get there. My gosh, I still get comments that like, yeah, but if you don't, then you're going to gain weight and be unhealthy. I'm like it's way bigger than what you eat on one day. Shut up and that and always like it's water retention. You didn't gain five pounds in one night. Sorry guys, it's not the way it works.
Jess: 34:04
Yeah, it's water. Let's talk face like metabolism. I agree Exactly. Do you have anything else to speak on as far as your running journey, or body image journey at all?
Jen: 34:15
The thing I thought of was when you were talking about middle school or high school, is just how much the environment we grow up in and like there's been research that shows that the way the mother talks about her body, your kids take that on, your kids hear that and they take that on and I don't know. I just think about my 17 year old and how she has no body image issues and it's really weird for me. You're so on the back when you're like look at this healthy human that I've raised. I remember when she was in middle school I'm like how do you feel about your body? She's like I feel great and I was like what does that feel like?
Jess: 34:52
Like for real. Tell me how that feels. I need to know more. Yeah, that's something too that I think, when we talk about how our body image is shaped. There is a body image workbook, I think is the title of it. It came out probably 12 years ago, but the very first thing you do in this workbook is you learn about how your body image is shaped. So it takes you through where there are standout moments in your childhood. What was your mom's body image like? Did she talk about her body? What was your dad's body image like? Did he talk about his body? Were there kids at school? Were there friends? Were there comments? Were you teased about appearance or personality traits and like takes you through that to help understand. Oh, that's why I always thought of myself as being way bigger than I really am. I mean for. So for me, I have my mom and my two sisters, and I have two brothers too, but they're, you know, they're boys. So you would actually like compare yourself to your sisters right. My mom and my sisters are five, nine, five, 10 and thin, naturally smaller in stature and it's not to say that I am overweight in this current body. But growing up, I mean, I was called a Butterball Turkey. Through middle school I was always more sturdily built and now I see this as a good thing and I feel strong and I feel solid and there's so many healthy things. But growing up it was so hard because the three of them, they all shared clothes and for me I'm like, yeah, I kind of grew out of that size too, in sixth grade.
Jen: 36:17
So I think, even as adults and if you have kids or are starting to have kids, to really think about what you say out loud, what you say out about your body. That was something I was really careful about, Like because even now do I like my body? Meh, Do I respect it? Yes, but I've never said those things out loud in front of my kids and I was very vocal and I think most people who in my family whatever very vocal about we're not talking about bodies, diets in my family in front of my kids and they've respected that and I think all of that helped a lot protect my kids from bad body image and just respecting their bodies and feeling good in their bodies, Absolutely that speaks volumes.
Jess: 37:02
That's awesome. Do you have anything input on? Because we talked about eating disorders? So the more specific clinical diagnosis eating disorder and body image. Do you work with athletes at all that it's more displaying behaviors of disordered eating? Yeah, and that translation into body image, Because I feel like for me on the recreational athlete and there's a lot more discussion on recognizing disordered eating and those certain behaviors, Because sometimes those behaviors can be used in a constructive way of if body crumples are on the table or if you're trying to do certain things, but then you look at how quickly they can become disordered.
Jen: 37:44
Yeah, disordered eating is definitely much more prevalent and common. I think it's a really small amount the population actually meets all the criteria for a diagnostic eating disorder, but the disordered eating is very prevalent and I think a lot of people don't even realize they have disordered eating behaviors.
Jess: 38:03
And especially when eating behaviors are learned from people around you, or maybe you know family, so yeah, and it's definitely connected to body image, a common thing I hear, especially with runners.
Jen: 38:16
I have half marathon runners. It's like you got to eat more carbs and in their head they've heard over and over again carbs are bad. And then they'll start to eat more carbs, but now they feel uncomfortable in their body, not that it's causing GI distress, but that they feel like they're bloating up or getting bigger. And I think that's a really common thing. I see, and again it has to do with the messaging and what we hear and what we believe and I found it really interesting that what's really common is like if we have a bad body image day, we'll perceive our body as being bigger or our clothes feeling tighter, and that's not even actually happening. It's just you're on high alert and so you're sensitive to those things, even though nothing has actually changed. And I think we talk about that enough that the way we perceive our body, our experience, our body isn't even accurate all the time.
Jess: 39:09
Speaking about that like body dysmorphia, right, and that's not saying you have body dysmorphic disorder, that's a whole other set of criteria. But looking at how often our perception of our bodies is an actually reality, our bodies don't physically change drastically from day to day, but our feelings about our body can change so much. So, like yesterday getting dressed and I'm like, oh hey, I think I might see an ab there. Oh my gosh, this definition, whatever. Has anything changed since from yesterday morning to this morning? No, but I look in the mirror this morning and I'm like what happened to your body? It's not as flat. Where's the definition that you saw yesterday? But nothing changed. Right, nothing changed. That's something that I don't think is talked about often enough. Is those thoughts about our bodies not necessarily always being true, right, yeah?
Jen: 39:56
Yeah, and that's, and feelings aren't true.
Jess: 40:00
That's one big thing too, depending on the type of body image you identify with. I don't know how familiar you are with acceptance and commitment therapy or act. That's one of the main tenants of it is like letting thoughts and feelings come up, acknowledging them and not having to accept them as true. It's such a powerful skill that I have been learning in my own life and it's also made me so much more aware of my thoughts and so much more aware of like, oh, that thought came up. That's absolutely absurd and that's not true. But okay, I'm just going to let it go Like wow, where did that come from? And not having to let yourself get hooked on it, because those feelings will come, those thoughts can come, yeah, and then they go away. Yeah, they might stay a while and it might be crappy, but learning to work through them.
Jen: 40:44
Yeah, I think that's a super important and helpful skill to have, especially was dealing with body image, or if you're trying to work on improving your body image. I ended up having that conversation a lot with a lot of my clients. Another thing that we talk about doing is keeping sticky notes like on their bathroom mirror or on their fridge something they see a lot of things that they like about themselves that have nothing to do with their body, things that they're proud of that have nothing to do with their body. Just trying to get the focus off of your body and on what really matters, what your worth really comes from, because really it's just, it's a meat sack, right, yeah that's.
Jess: 41:26
I love that so much. That's what I I just that's so good. I like the thought of putting sticky notes on a mirror that are affirmations in a way, right Of I am worthy because I am a human, and finding the things that you like about yourself that aren't appearance related, but putting them on the mirror where you are looking in the mirror and you're able to have appreciation for this meat sack that allows us to experience magic in the world, but you're also finding that piece of appreciation too. For that you can find the things you like, because that's something too. I haven't done enough research on it yet to say definitively one way or another, but I have trouble with people who talk about affirmations and the context of like you're beautiful just the way you are and love your body and love your fat rules and all of these super like positive affirmations that just feel so disconnected. Yeah, don't help you to connect to your body more. They help you to disconnect even more.
Jen: 42:24
And I think what I have a problem with with that is it's still focused on appearance.
Jess: 42:28
Yeah, Yep, and I think there was a shirt that was really popular for a while. That was like the way you look is the least important thing about you, and it's something that a lot of times we rationally know but we fall back into so quickly of forgetting.
Jen: 42:42
What can be hard about body images? It's so appearance focused. And how do we? It would be wonderful if we all just stopped having anything to say about our appearance or any focus on appearance. I think that would make everything a lot better. But that's not the world we live in right?
Jess: 42:58
No, it makes too much money on appearance, fixing weight loss, all of these things, for it to ever be anything different.
Jen: 43:07
For convincing you. There's something wrong with your appearance that you need to.
Jess: 43:10
There's something you need to change always yeah, there's too much, yeah, and that's not something that I mean. I'd love to look at it like dismantling capitalism or whatever else and like have that discussion that it's the powers that be and it's the system and it's the media and it's all of these things. But it's, how do we weather that storm and how do we be resilient and respond with self protective factors to continue to have that healthy, respectful relationship with ourselves? To say, actually, it's not about my appearance, I can have a healthy body image, I can be body neutral, body accepting, without this obsession on having a good appearance. Right, right, do you have any other thoughts? In the realm of being a dietitian, having worked with athletes and worked with humans across such a diverse background when it comes to body image and food and all of those things, I think one thing that I see a lot, especially on the clinical side.
Jen: 44:10
What I often will see is that kind of going back to weight and body size. Doctors will just see a BMI or a weight and then, just without asking about background, asking what the person's doing anything, will just automatically tell the person to lose weight and to just try an Atkins diet or keto diet. I hear this all the time and they go to the doctor and that happens and they call me and they're crying.
Jess: 44:35
Doctors don't have very much education in nutrition.
Jen: 44:38
No, no, and I don't think they have a lot of education on how to lead those conversations, but just kind of at that point that even when I work with my clients, like I said, I don't ever tell them they have to be a certain weight, that they need to lose weight. I think what's really the most important is just remembering that your body is its own individual thing with its own individual needs. And just because some person can be healthy at 12% body fat, that doesn't mean that your body can very well need to be at 25% body fat to get your period to be healthy. Everyone's body is really different and that can't be measured with numbers, no matter what your doctor says, no matter what a chart says, that there's a lot more things to consider I love it Two things on that.
Jess: 45:27
One BMI is bullshit. You know, maybe there's still some validity from a population basis, looking broad scope, or whatever, but BMI is bullshit. And I hate that there are so many conversations that people have around BMI with their providers that have no basis, because research on BMI, on people's body sizes, show that negative health outcomes don't start until you've more than entered what they consider morbidly obese. So it's wild to me that that's still just such the prevalent conversation and it is. I've had it happen to me. Every person I've talked to has some kind of provider story where they said I was training for a marathon and I got told that my BMI was too high and I needed to change how I ate so that I could lose weight.
Jen: 46:12
You know like it happened to me at the end of my recovery. I had been stable for a little bit and my BMI was overweight and provider told me that and I was like you know, I just like spent a really long time going through eating but no one asked.
Jess: 46:27
No, of course not. The other thing that I was going to speak to is you're saying every body's individual are healthy weight, healthy body fat percentage. What we need to eat and how we take care of our bodies is individual. But there's also that piece of learning to listen to those body cues and I think that that's something that we get so far away from. If we are down that path of disordered eating, if we crossed over into eating disorder territory, we get so far removed from those hunger cues, from the cues that tell you that it's bedtime right, like not just the eating piece but those self care pieces of. We have gotten so far away from trusting what our bodies tell us because we're told that maybe the thing that we've internalized is we have to intermittent fast and then we get mad when our stomach growls at 830 in the morning because we're trying to intermittent fast until noon Having those hunger cues. And when we get so far and lose sight of that so far down the line, it is so hard and I don't know you probably have seen this in clinical practices helping people come back to that and being able to trust, to be able to hear those cues, listen to those cues but also act and trust that those cues are telling them this is what my body needs and being able to respect that, because that's something that I haven't even struggled with. I'm going to just say disordered eating over the years, just with internalizing, messaging about being a smaller runner and all of those pieces and going and trying different diets and thinking that these are the answers, and then getting mad when I'm like, well, this low carb diet is supposed to help me get like super shredded. So I'm eating 100 grams of carbs a day and I'm losing weight, but I'm hungry all the time and I'm getting mad at my body to just cooperate already because I'm trying to do stuff to make it better and then you're like what I'm not actually making it better. You know, you learn in hindsight right Like shutting down and pushing away those cues for so long and coming back to that's a freaking journey, yeah.
Jen: 48:31
And it can take a lot of again unlearning, right that your body telling you it's hungry, it's okay to feed it. You don't have to push through it and ignore it. Yeah, exactly, when your body tells you it has to pee, you don't just push through and keep going, right, you stop and go pee. I mean I guess you could, but at some point you're going to lose that battle.
Jess: 48:53
I'm glad you just said pee, because I was totally going like number two. I was thinking that direction. So I was thinking about how many times I pooped my pants during a race before because I legitimately tried to ignore the fact that I needed to go, because I was like, just get a little further. Just get a little further. I know there's a port-a-potty up here, keep going. No, you don't. And I remember actively telling myself, thinking that this would be helpful, like you don't need to go, it's okay, you don't need to go. And then being within sight of this freaking port-a-potty, I'm just losing it. And I was wearing hot pink shorts. Oh no, yeah, sorry, bend Marathon, but you have to get a whole other side of me. But yeah, if you have to go, you have to go, and that's hunger. Cues are the same thing. It's your body telling you something. I feel like I just ascended into full-on runner territory. We made it to the end of this for me to actually tell a poop story.
Jen: 49:42
I haven't. I've been running what since I was 17, right, and I'm 40. I'm almost 43. So what is that?
Jess: 49:48
26 years I'm just going to poop my pants, just knock on someone.
Jen: 49:52
Just keep going. I mean, I made it to port-a-potty. I've been close, but I have thankfully made it to port-a-potty every time. That's an accomplishment.
Jess: 50:01
I'm proud of you. Yeah, it's been scary Once during a race, once during a training run, and I've been running for 11 years.
Jen: 50:09
My time is going to run out at some point, right?
Jess: 50:13
It seems like it happens to everyone at some point Some kind of story to tell. Yeah, is this a good point to wrap it up, yeah, okay, we'll just leave our poop stories here. Jen, thanks so much for being our first guest of Story Girl. Yeah, I so appreciate this conversation.
Jen: 50:29
I feel very special that I'm the first guest.
Jess: 50:31
I mean maybe I played favorites, I don't know, but I appreciate your time. This has been awesome, really good to reconnect and talk running. So thanks for being on the show. Yeah, thanks for having me. If you enjoyed this podcast episode, please feel free to follow, subscribe, like whatever the heck you do with podcasts. As always, stay sturdy, friends, and we'll talk to you next week. Goodbye.