Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: Foreign.
[00:00:11] Speaker B: What'S worthwhile healing Mind, body and spirit. I'm Ramsey Zimmerman. I choose peace of mind, vitality of body, and joy of spirit over stress, exhaustion, or overwhelm. Together, let's explore and pursue the many ways to build holistic health and wellness.
[00:00:32] Speaker A: And so when you're in an eating disorder, your mind isn't even able to think clearly because it's not getting what it needs to function well. So there's like two parts of that, right? It's you're not getting what you need nutritionally in order to think clearly, in order to focus, in order to really recognize those thoughts and let your brain work. But then you also have that negative, condescending eating disorder voice in your head as well. What? How we see ourselves, how we feel about our bodies is not normally because of our bodies. Your body is a good body no matter what it looks like. Your body is working really hard to keep you alive and it deserves to be treated kindly.
[00:01:16] Speaker B: Hey there. It's Ramsay here. That was Abby Mallard. Abby is a nutritionist in the eating disorder recovery space who specializes in food freedom and self acceptance.
She struggled with bulimia in her teens when one day she suddenly and completely lost her vision as a result of mineral imbalance. Based on her own recovery, Abby helps her clients to develop a healthy relationship with food, learn to feel and understand their body's hunger cues again, and to seek out nutrient dense foods. If you are struggling with your eating habits or even wonder if you might be, Abby's message is a powerful one.
You are not alone and you are worthy of help and health. Let's begin.
Hey, Abby, how are you doing today?
[00:02:01] Speaker A: Hey, I'm doing well, Ramsey, how about you?
[00:02:04] Speaker B: I am doing great.
Great to talk with you today. You are a nutritionist and a food relationship coach. I think you bring a really important perspective to the conversations that I have on the podcast.
You struggled through an eating disorder in your teens and these days you help your clients with their eating habits through your business, which is called Health My Friend.
I think that's a cool name for a company. By the way, what does that name mean to you and what are you expressing to your clients through your company name?
[00:02:42] Speaker A: Yeah, thank you. Health My Friend is kind of a double meaning name.
Almost. Almost like you would say peace my friend or like a greeting in expressing wanting to give something or gift something to someone.
Health my Friend. But then also the double entendre of health being my friend. Right.
I think that a lot of times health and health journeys can feel really overwhelming. And restrictive and have a lot of kind of negative tied up in them.
And so helping just in that little name, but then also deeper in the work that I do, helping people to really see health as their friend and make it their friend rather than, you know, something that they're always kind of battling or fighting back and forth with.
[00:03:38] Speaker B: Yeah, it's a really nice way to frame it kind of from the very beginning in terms of how they get kind of introduced to your company.
So tell me a bit about what it was like for you growing up and how was your eating disordered?
[00:03:54] Speaker A: Yeah, so growing up, I was in a really wonderful household, had a really good family dynamic.
And then we had a really big change in our life, and things just got kind of shitty really fast.
Not very good.
Um, and I felt very controlled and stifled and suffocated in the environment that I was in.
Um, and so I started struggling with an eating disorder when I was around 13 years old.
Um, it was really a coping mechanism for me, Um, a way to control something in my life when I felt like everything else was out of my control.
Um, I didn't really feel like I had much stability. There was a lot of back and forth with moving and community and just not really support as much from my parents as I had had in the past.
And so my eating disorder really came from a way of.
Well, from the way of feeling like I didn't have control over anything and then wanting something to control. Um, but I think it was a little deeper for me as well. I think that with the big change and just kind of how things changed in my family, I was feeling pretty alone and unseen, especially in my family. And so I think there was a part of me that thought that maybe if I wasn't doing well enough, that someone would notice me.
And.
Yeah, just a couple different layers to it. Right. Like a way of. A way of kind of wanting to be seen and feeling like maybe if something, you know, wasn't good or I was doing bad enough, someone would notice me.
And so I struggled with bulimia, primarily binging and purging and hit it very well. Even though I wanted someone to notice, it was still something that I hid.
And I struggled with that for about six, five, six years until I finally asked for help.
And it was just a really. It was a really dark time of my life because there was mental health that went along with that, too. I was feeling very depressed, some suicidal ideations, and just.
Just not doing well overall.
And even though my eating was something that I felt Like I could control it also really had a control over me.
And it was a very obsessive relationship with food.
I think that's all that I ever thought about, honestly, like in my head, like in my mind, the only things that I was thinking about were what am I eating, what have I eaten, what can I eat, what am I not allowed to eat?
You know, all of kind of those very obsessive thoughts.
[00:07:14] Speaker B: Yeah, it sounds like health was not your friend at that point.
[00:07:19] Speaker A: No, health was not my friend.
[00:07:22] Speaker B: Yeah.
So what, what led you to kind of break that silence and sort of face that you had a problem and ask for help?
[00:07:33] Speaker A: Yeah, I think that I knew for a while that I, I knew that I had a problem. I knew that this was not a way that, you know, I wanted to live forever.
Um, I knew that I was really struggling.
Um, I think that there was a part of me that was wanting to keep that idea of control for as long as I could.
But ultimately I think I just got to the point where I was exhausted, honestly. I was exhausted of the mental battle. I was exhausted of the way that I was, you know, going through life. Having to hide, having to feel really alone and like, I couldn't be real.
And you know, a lot of that came from me feeling alone. But I really wanted to get out of that place of feeling lonely and feeling like, you know, I didn't really have people in my life who saw me and who knew what I was, who I was, what was going on in my life. Um, but also I remember I had a really scary incident physically. And I think that maybe that kind of triggered the, you know, prompted me to kind of ask for help. Um, part of my eating disorder as well was kind of that over exercise piece, trying to make up for food that I had eaten.
And I remember in my parents old house, um, my bedroom was downstairs and I would like run up and down the stairs. That was like my, my exercise of trying to like just undo the food.
Um, and there was one day that I don't even think I was running, but I was going down the stairs and I slipped like on the second step down to the bottom, not even very far, but I fell and I lost my vision completely.
Yeah, like I was, I could hear, I could, you know, I was aware like I hadn't passed out, but my vision was completely gone.
And that really scared me. And I ended up being taken to the hospital in an ambulance and my sodium levels were very, very, very low because of my eating disorder and not getting what my body needed nutritionally.
And I think that that was kind of a turning point for me. You know, I already knew that I didn't want to keep living this way, but then when something like that happens, it was almost like a wake up call of, okay, I really do need to ask for help.
And asking for help wasn't easy.
I, you know, I still, I felt very scared and alone and didn't really know how my parents would react when they found out how they would respond.
And I'm very grateful. My mom was very supportive when she found out. I wrote her a letter and I hid it under her pillow for her to find because I just couldn't, you know, say the words out loud.
And she helped me get in with a really good therapist and a good dietitian, and that kind of started kicked off my, my healing and recovery journey.
[00:10:55] Speaker B: Yeah, that's, that's, that's really great that you got to that point, even though it was very difficult to get there.
Yeah, I want to pivot the conversation.
A lot of the conversations that I have and the studying that I'm doing is around nutritional therapy and helping people to find ways to eat and exercise and get rest to be more healthy and feel better.
Um, and that's like, in many cases, it's starting from a baseline that is, you know, fairly healthy. Right. But it's, it's like, okay, well, I eat a lot of junk food and, you know, I don't sleep terribly well and don't get a lot of exercise. But that baseline is sort of, you know, moderately healthy. But what you're talking about, it sounds like you sort of specialize in also working with people who have a negative baseline in the sense that they don't have a healthy relationship with food, just in general, whether it's junk food or health food.
So how is that, you know, particularly different for you? How do you walk that line? Because you're not, you're not really a therapist.
You kind of play one on tv. Right. But you're not really a therapist. But how do you sort of balance that line of working with people.
[00:12:21] Speaker A: In.
[00:12:21] Speaker B: That situation through, you know, all the way to having a healthy relationship with healthy food?
[00:12:28] Speaker A: Yeah. Yeah, that's a really good question.
I never really start when I'm working with a client. I never start with them tracking food or kind of like, we don't really start with working towards healthy food, quote, unquote, to say.
And I'm, I'm really careful with the language that I use as well when it comes to working with People we call, you know, nutritionally dense foods, foods that don't have a lot of nutrition or nutritional content to them.
But really we start to work on helping them build a good relationship with food in general. Food point blank, whatever food that may be.
My goal when someone comes to me in the struggle of an eating disorder or in the struggle of, you know, a disordered eating pattern, is not to be like, okay, you need to eat five servings of vegetables and five servings of fruit. And because that's just more obsession and that's more rules and control around food, and that's not what they need, right?
And so a lot of times we work more towards healing that relationship with food of, you know, breaking down a lot of those healthy roles and healthy ideas that have been, you know, given to them in one way or another.
All of the diets that they've, you know, followed or picked up different things from. You know, a lot of times there's, you can't eat past 7 o' clock at night. There's, you know, you have to intermittent fast or. There's so many things that are out there that people can kind of pick up on and grab hold of when it comes to the rules and ideas around food. And so we break down a lot of those. We work on a lot of body awareness, pain, paying attention to, okay, just because someone said that I should eat this doesn't mean that I need to.
If I eat this, if I eat this thing that this person is saying that I should eat, how does it actually feel in my body? Because every single person's body is different in the way that it responds and reacts to different foods.
So helping them build that body awareness instead of kind of tapping into all of the rules and thoughts and ideas around food or to themselves and how they're feeling when they eat certain foods, whether that's mentally, physically.
And then also a lot of work Ramsay around making sure that people are getting what they need nutritionally, because nine times out of 10, when someone comes to me, if they're struggling, they are not. Like, they're not at a baseline, like you said, a healthy baseline, but they're not getting what their body needs nutritionally.
Nine times out of 10, they are eating way less than what their body needs per caloric intake.
And so we kind of work on building that back up before even focusing on, okay, what are the different parts of the calories that you're intaking?
What is your protein? Like, what is, you know, your fat, your carbs? Like, if we even get to that point in our work together.
But first it's helping them kind of reframe and refeed their body, essentially.
[00:16:16] Speaker B: Yeah, you.
You put. Brought up the. The point in the phrase of body awareness. And I'd like to dig into that for a little bit.
You know, I hear a lot about the idea of intuitive eating and, and that seems like a really great ideal, you know, being able to, you know, listen to your body and trust your body in terms of what it's telling you you should eat. But, you know, often we. We don't. We can't trust what the, like the, the signals that we're getting.
So how does the sort of body awareness and intuitive eating, like, how are those ideas kind of connected? And how can one potentially lead towards another in a good way?
[00:17:02] Speaker A: Yeah, so kind of going back to that, like, someone doesn't start with a healthy baseline.
When I'm working with someone, they're not usually at a place where they can listen to their body for intuitive eating purposes.
I know that when I was in the middle of my eating disorder, if I would have listened to my body, I would have been severely under eating.
I would have been.
I was really harming my body.
And a lot of people who I work with are in that same space, so helping them, kind of tying in the body awareness and the refeeding of the body together.
I don't have someone.
I don't have someone start to listen to their body when it comes to hunger cues and fullness cues right away. When I'm working with them, I more often help them start to get back to eating more consistently and frequently throughout the day in order to refeed their body, in order to even get their body to give them hunger and fullness cues again.
Because a lot of times what happens is when people are in that struggle of an eating disorder, they aren't really noticing those hunger and fullness cues. Their body might still be sending them, and sometimes not, depending on what the patterns have been.
But even if the body is sending them, they're not really noticing them. So we do part of the work of eating consistently throughout the day so that their body can learn the correct patterns around food again and start to send some of those hunger cues again. But also I work with clients to really recognize hunger and fullness cues because a lot of times they don't know what they are or they don't recognize them. You know, I think a lot of times when we think about hunger cues, we think about our stomach growling.
That's like the main thing that comes to mind. But there are so many others that are hunger cues. It can show up as fatigue, as irritation, as a headache.
There are so many different signals that your body gives you when it comes to hunger. And so kind of giving them some education around that as well, and then bringing in that body awareness piece, really paying attention.
As they start to get to a more baseline level with food, helping them pay attention to, okay, is my body sending me a hunger cue? Okay, I'm slowing down my eating.
You know, I'm being really intentional as I'm eating. Am I noticing those fullness cues popping up?
And then we can move in a little bit more to the intuitive eating piece, where you're listening to what your body wants, you're listening to what your body is telling you it needs.
But first it has to be kind of that piece of teaching the body what is normal again, because it's been in such a state of unnormal, of unhealthy, and then bringing in kind of that intuitive eating piece.
[00:20:27] Speaker B: I often think about body and mind and spirit, and I think of them as separate but connected things.
And it. As I'm sitting here listening to you, I'm thinking about the sort of the body and the mind having interactions around hunger.
And that notion, that idea of, I want to eat or I am done eating, you know, is that the mind saying that? Is that the body saying that? And are the mind and the body, you know, synced up on that? I would think that there's lots of discordance about, you know, the. The body saying, I want to eat, and the mind saying, no, I don't want you to eat, or vice versa to ever think about that. Do you ever work through those issues?
[00:21:18] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah. And I'm really glad that you brought that up, because that is something that is very, very common. You know, we call it the eating disorder voice. The ed voice in your head of, no, you're not allowed to eat. No, you can't eat that, whatever the voice is.
And that can feel really, really strong in your mind, even as your body is telling you, we're hungry and we need food, we're crashing, we need fuel.
But also the really interesting part is that 40% of the nutrients that you eat go straight to your brain. That's almost half of the food that you eat. And so when you're in an eating disorder and you're not getting the food and the fuel that you need, your mind, your mind isn't even able to think clearly because it's not getting what it needs to Function well. So there's like two parts of that. Right. It's. You're not getting what you need nutritionally in order to think clearly, in order to focus, in order to really.
Yeah. Recognize those thoughts and let your brain work in a healthy and correct way. But then you also have that negative, condescending eating disorder voice in your head as well.
[00:22:32] Speaker B: Well, and you.
Inside of your gut, where your, you know, your microbiome is, they are the ones who produce the precursors to neurotransmitters that make you feel either good or bad or anything in between. And. And those folks need to, you know, be fed to kind of be giving the right signals.
[00:23:03] Speaker A: Yeah, you're messing your whole body up, your whole gut, stomach, brain, all of it. When you're.
When you're in the middle of an eating disorder, just not getting what your body needs.
[00:23:20] Speaker B: Are there some ways that you help your clients kind of stay grounded and sort of stay in touch with what is not just happening in their own bodies, but also happening around them kind of as they experience it? What? What's that?
Yeah.
[00:23:43] Speaker A: We have a lot of stimulus in our world and a lot of the grounding practices that I have people work on specifically with healing, the relationship with food, is you're really focusing when you're eating on having no distractions. So. So, like, a lot of times we'll eat when we're watching television, or we'll eat and we'll be scrolling on our phones or, you know, things like that.
Really helping people kind of slow down and be present with their food can be really healing in the grounding and. And coping space with food.
But more than that, you know, a lot of times, how we're feeling about our bodies and how we're feeling about our food, sometimes it has nothing to do with our bodies and nothing to do with our food.
A lot of times it's coming from how regulated is our nervous system, how dysregulated is our nervous system? Are we feeling really peaceful and calm or are we feeling really chaotic and angry or scared or, you know, whatever it may be. You know, we talk about emotional eating and stress eating a lot as a society. That's something that, you know, people do. They use food as a coping mechanism, and sometimes it just turns into a little bit more.
And so helping clients find those other coping skills to help regulate themselves so that it's not just food that they're reaching for, so that they're not just using food and drinks to cope and to make them feel okay.
It's It's a tricky thing because a lot of us.
[00:25:45] Speaker B: What are some of those.
Yeah, what are some of those other things that you encourage people to do?
[00:25:51] Speaker A: Yeah. Um, so one of my favorite things is a weighted blanket when someone is feeling really chaotic or anxious. A weighted blanket, pressure on the body. Even if you just have someone lay on top of you, if you put, you know, pillows on top of you, anything that kind of makes it feel like pressure, even a self hug, like if you're really feeling that kind of rise of emotion and stress and anxiety.
That is a really, really great coping mechanism that I like to util for my clients and for myself.
Journaling or talking to a friend, you know, when you have lots of thoughts and just chaos in your brain, or a therapist having someone that you can get it out to instead of keeping it all inside.
Lots of breathing practices. So like deep, slow breaths to help regulate the nervous system.
Going outside, getting in the sunshine, putting your feet in the earth.
Little things that add up and make a big difference.
[00:27:03] Speaker B: Yeah, well, I hear you talking about a lot of things that are good stress relievers and ways to sort of deal with stress.
We've had a stressful last five years or more as a society.
We probably have plenty of stressors, you know, still coming at us and, and into the future, you know, with kind of all that we as a society have been dealing with. Something that we sort of strive for is this idea of a new normal.
Hear that a lot. You know, the.
Trying to find a new normal. I wonder if that phrase, how that phrase resonates with you.
You know, as I sort of listen to your experience and to the experience of your clients, it seems like finding a new normal would be pretty appealing.
[00:28:04] Speaker A: Yeah. Yeah, I like that phrase, a new normal.
And I think that it's.
I think that it resonates with me.
I think that it resonates with a lot of people, a lot of my clients.
But I also always come back to this kind of idea of what is really normal. Right. Like what is normal and who would.
[00:28:27] Speaker B: Want to be normal anyways?
[00:28:28] Speaker A: Right.
[00:28:29] Speaker B: How boring would that be?
[00:28:31] Speaker A: You don't want normal? No. Normal can look different to everyone.
And I feel like it's always changing.
I like the phrase and I think that it's almost like a never ending journey to health and to taking care of yourself. Well, to maybe normal, whatever normal may be. But I talk about that a lot with people that, you know, it's not. You get to the most healed, best version of yourself and then you stop the work. And you just stay there.
It's a never ending process, a never ending journey of working to take care of yourself. Well, of steps forward and steps backwards. Like healing is not linear, health is not linear. There's lots of ups and downs.
So like, yeah, maybe you get to a new normal for, you know, a year, three years, and then it's starting to shift and pivot to another new normal because life is never staying completely the same.
[00:29:42] Speaker B: And then it's a new, new normal.
[00:29:45] Speaker A: Yeah, new, new normal.
[00:29:47] Speaker B: Well, and yeah, and I think what we're really talking about is finding things like balance and equilibrium because I think those are, those ideas are really critical and crucial in health.
Having getting into a space of equilibrium where we're not being kind of thrown from one thing to the next.
I think normal in that sense or that context implies that you have some reliable situations, at least for a time, that you sort of understand what's happening around you and that you, that things are pretty close to what you expect.
And you can sort of deal in a healthy way with things that are at least somewhat predictable.
But then you also might find yourself in a, in a really dynamic equilibrium, meaning that things do change and change fairly quickly. But if you have mechanisms in which to recognize changes and sort of deal with them in sort of a constructive, productive, healthy way, then you can have a dynamic equilibrium and sort of stay within tolerances even as things change around you. I'm getting really nerdy and like technical all of a sudden. I don't know what's up with this.
[00:31:09] Speaker A: No, I love that. That's so true. And yeah, kind of finding that stability. And even if it's not stability on the outside, because we can't always control the outer environment, we can control the stability of inside of our minds, of our bodies, at least to a certain extent.
Maybe it's not all always within our control.
But then I also think about that too.
The window of tolerance, like you were saying kind of that how you tolerate things when you work through different situations, when you use the different coping mechanisms, when you kind of push yourself outside of your comfort zone into the areas that make you uncomfortable and maybe hard for your nervous system or hard for yourself mentally.
Like, even though that's really uncomfortable, it helps you grow and also build that window of tolerance to where, okay, if that same thing were to happen again, maybe you would handle it a little bit better or maybe not be quite as dysregulated or triggered by it.
And of course it's really important, like when you're kind of testing that limit of window of intolerance to be really supported and in a good place. Like, you don't want to do it when you're in the depths of despair. But I think that when you kind of are able to do those things for yourself, that it does build that window of tolerance. So that when something that maybe would have been so triggering before comes up, that maybe it's not quite as harmful or hard for you.
[00:32:51] Speaker B: Yeah, for sure.
So one other thing I wanted to talk about was body image, because I know that that's really significant for folks who know struggle with disordered eating. And then it also can, and it often is part of a goal for, you know, health and fitness.
But talk to me a bit about, you know, where and how you sort of address body image with your clients.
[00:33:23] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah, I like that you brought that up. That it's normally kind of a goal for someone in a health journey is to look a certain way. Right. Or to lose weight or gain weight, you know, depending on where someone may be.
Yeah. Body image is a tricky thing.
And again, I think it comes back to some of that.
We.
How we see ourselves, how we feel about our bodies is not normally because of our bodies, sometimes because of our nervous system, so bringing in those regulation and coping mechanisms, but then also helping people recognize that their body is so much more than what it looks like.
You know, recognizing all of the things that your body is doing for you on a normal basis.
Your body is working really hard to keep you alive, and it deserves to be treated kindly as well. And just the idea of, like, your body is a good body no matter what it looks like, no matter what, you know, what it looks like on the outside, that it is doing a really good job of taking care of you.
And that can also be tricky for people who have health issues, too, of kind of having that.
That positive outlook on their body or that appreciative outlook on their body if they feel like it's not doing a very good job of taking care of them.
So working through some of those things and also just helping people see that they themselves are so much more than their body.
A lot of times people who are in an eating disorder struggle or are just struggling with disordered eating or restricting food, they can feel like kind of their identity is wrapped up in what they look like physically.
And so helping people really come back to the root of who they are as a person.
Their values, their, you know, their characteristics, their skills, the things that make them them, instead of just looking at themselves as a Physical body.
[00:35:40] Speaker B: Are there.
Are there other things, other messages that you'd like people to sort of walk away with?
You know, maybe someone listening who kind of is struggling or is maybe just thinking, asking themselves the question, you know, am I struggling?
And, you know, what.
Do you have a message for people like that?
[00:36:06] Speaker A: Yeah, I think a couple things.
You know, it's not always easy to have a really good relationship with your body and with food, and that's normal.
It's okay. And it's normal. If you're struggling.
It's a process to get help, to heal, but you are always worthy of help. You are always worthy of healing, no matter if you feel like you're sick enough or not sick enough. Right.
If you think in the back of your head that you may be struggling, you're probably struggling and you're worthy of getting help, you're worthy of asking for that help.
If you're just not, you know, very happy with where you're at, you're worthy of getting help. It doesn't have to be a clinically diagnosable eating disorder in order to ask for help, and it's really scary to ask for help. So do it in a way that feels safe and comfortable for you.
Um, and then the other piece, too. Just know that, like, you know, it's not always about completely loving the way that you look, but appreciating your body and having a little bit of peace and acceptance for where you're at and for what you look like, rather than completely focusing on that, loving, adoring how your body looks.
Um, and, I mean, there's so much more. I could all. All the things, but just know that you're not alone. And if you're struggling, you're not alone. There are resources, There is help out there.
There are people like me, There are people all over. And if you need help or just want to talk to someone, there are lots of people out there who care.
[00:37:57] Speaker B: And how can people get in touch with you? How can they learn more about what you do and what you have to offer?
[00:38:06] Speaker A: Yeah, so my company name is Health, my friend.
And. And that is me. Everywhere you can find me on. Instagram is my most active platform. If you send me a message on there, I will respond.
If you follow me on there, I will send you a message. So connect with me there. And then my website is healthmyfriend.com. those are the two main places to get in touch with me and to kind of see a little bit more of my work.
[00:38:37] Speaker B: Well, Abby, thank you so much. For talking to us today.
You have a really powerful story and perspective from where you are based on where you've come from. And I can really see that you have a lot of empathy and a lot of heart for your clients and for everyone who is really struggling with their eating and wanting to have a healthy relationship with food and and to have healthy food be what they have a healthy relationship with.
So thank you so much.
Really appreciate you coming on. It's been really great talking to you.
[00:39:22] Speaker A: Yeah, thank you so much for having me. I really appreciate it.
[00:39:25] Speaker B: Absolutely.
Where to Go from Here Visit what's Worthwhile to to learn more about me, Ramsey Zimmerman and please reach out to me and let me know what you think. I don't want this podcast to be some message in a bottle thrown out to sea. I want to hear back from you. Please send me a message or an email or hit me up on X, LinkedIn or Instagram. And please leave a rating and review for the what's Worthwhile podcast on Apple, Spotify, Iheart, or Amazon. Thanks, Ram.
