211: Recovery From An Eating Disorder (Part 2)

Chris Sandel: Welcome to Episode 211 of Real Health Radio. You can find the show notes and the links talked about as part of this episode at seven-health.com/211.

Hey everyone. Welcome back to another episode of Real Health Radio. I’m your host, Chris Sandel. A couple of weeks ago, for Episode 208, I released an interview with a client of mine called Ilinca. I do these kind of shows a couple of times a year, and they coincide with Seven Health taking on new clients. I’m back with another one of those client episodes today, and it is with Hermione.

We have been working together for a year now. For the first 5 months, we were having consults every 2 weeks, and then after that it changed to once a month, and we’ve now just changed over to every 2 months. We’ve changed based on what was right for Hermione at the time and what level of support she needed, which is what I do with all clients.

A couple of things worth mentioning. Hermione, throughout the interview or at different points, uses the acronym PN. This is short for Precision Nutrition. She also makes reference to an article I’d written about being ‘sick enough’, and that this is often a barrier for people reaching out for help or even thinking that they need help because they feel like they aren’t ‘sick enough’. I’ve put a link to this article in the show notes if you want to read it.

We talk about her exercise habit and how at no point did she stop exercising. She reduced what she was doing and changed what she was doing, but never ceased it. We’ve actually talked about this separately to this interview, and in hindsight, Hermione said she thinks she probably should’ve taken time off, and that she knows now that things would’ve improved quicker if she did, but she simply wasn’t ready or able to do this. She even says, “You never made me do anything I didn’t want to.”

I think this is important because if I’m thinking purely from a physiological perspective, then taking time off was clearly the best thing for her to do, but I have to live in the real world, and in this instance she wasn’t willing or able to do this. Recovery isn’t binary, where you’re either recovering or you’re not; it’s messy, and it’s on a continuum. The best plan is the plan that someone’s able to follow, and me putting pressure on to say that time off exercise is the only way forward would’ve backfired.

Hermione is now in a much better place with exercise and being able to listen to her body and fueling herself well enough to support not just the exercise, but the demands of her life. But I wanted to flag this up because even though in a perfect world, this wasn’t the best choice to make, we don’t live in a perfect world. This is what her recovery journey looked like.

As I mentioned a moment ago, I’m currently taking on new clients for the last time this year. If you hear parts of yourself in Hermione’s story, then I’d love to have a chat and see if I could help. At the time of recording this intro, over half the spots are gone, so if you’re looking for help then please get in contact. To find out more about working together and to apply for a free initial chat, you can go to seven-health.com/help, and I will put a link to this in the show notes. Let’s get on with today’s show. Here is my conversation with Hermione.

Hey, Hermione. Thanks for joining me on the show today.

Hermione: Hi, Chris.

00:03:48

A bit about Hermione’s background

Chris Sandel: I guess to start with, do you want to explain a little about your background and why you first got in contact with me?

Hermione: That is a bit of a big question. Basically, I would say I’ve struggled with definitely body image my entire life, and then probably disordered eating, eating disorders, more so once I hit about 20 years old. But let’s say starting back in Grade 3, I guess, is when it probably took root and seeded all these body image issues.

I noticed that I was bigger than the other girls. I would look at them sitting beside me and notice how my thighs took up more space than they did and stuff like that. Ever since then, it’s kind of snowballed where all through grade school and high school, I was very conscious of the fact that I was bigger than all my friends, and very uncomfortable in my own skin. At that time, though, I didn’t really do anything about it. I just lived feeling really, really bad about myself.

I went into university still really not in a great headspace about my body and how I looked. Luckily enough, it didn’t occupy too much brain space and mental time. I was so focused on my studies and doing well in my academics that it again took a backseat, though always I was really, really uncomfortable in my skin and very conscious of the fact that I felt so, so big compared to all the other girls.

Then with me graduating university and going into the working world, I finally had all this extra time because I wasn’t doing lab reports anymore or studying for exams and midterms, and I decided, “This is the time to get into fitness.” Things snowballed really, really quickly for me. It went from just training here and there to pretty much all the time and really hard, two-a-days, and being really concerned with what I was eating.

I took all that drive and focus and determination that I had on my studies and academics and put that into exercising and eating. [laughs] So I was a little bit of a mess, and I would say basically from the age of 20-21 all the way to just shortly before I contacted you, I definitely was in the depth of full-blown eating disorders and exercise addiction and that kind of stuff. It was really hard. I’ve spanned the gamut from probably being more ‘anorexic’ and then going into the binge eating and just bouncing all over the place, my weight and my body bouncing all over the place and being completely unstable.

Then probably about a year, year and a half before I reached out to you – and even a little bit before that – I think all of us have these little thoughts in the back of our head about “Something’s not right. I’m broken. My body’s broken. There’s something wrong with me.” You’re just so ashamed and you don’t want to tell anybody about it because you genuinely think you’re the only person who’s struggling with this stuff.

I don’t even know how I honestly first stumbled onto more recovery type information, but once I did – I guess I should rewind a little bit. Part of that 21 to 27-ish chunk of time, I really got into fitness and bodybuilding in particular, and following pretty intense regimented diets and training plans. In that world is Precision Nutrition, a little bit. They’re a little bit there. I wouldn’t say they’re fully blown into that, but they can touch and breach that pool of an audience.

I had stumbled across some of their stuff, and I think in particular I stumbled across their infographic on the cost of getting lean. That set off some thoughts for me, and I looked into them and I think I really fell in love with Krista Scott-Dixon because she was so reasonable. I searched her, and I found your interview with her. I think that is how I actually ended up finding you.

Chris Sandel: Yeah, I had her on the podcast.

Hermione: Yeah. Before reaching out to you, I had been listening to you for probably at least a year if not a year and a half, closer to two. But all that said, the little idea in my head that maybe my body wasn’t broken, and being a little bit more human – that what I was experiencing was actually the very human reaction – and then yeah, I guess that takes me to the period of time I mentioned where I started to get into the recovery material.

I remember I started listening to you, and I started to realise I wasn’t the only one experiencing all this brokenness, or what I attributed to be brokenness. I thought literally I was just addicted to food and couldn’t control myself, and I was the only one. Then you start hearing stories. I had stumbled on you through Krista Scott-Dixon, through that bodybuilding fitness world that I was so obsessed with at the time and doing everything possible to be as lean as possible and have as little body fat as possible.

So it was really kind of a godsend that I stumbled onto you. I stumbled onto people, too, like Christy Harrison. Christy Harrison was a big one as well. There’s definitely others. There’s lots of recovery people out there, and I spent a period of time prior to reaching out to you just listening to all this recovery stuff. I purchased the book Intuitive Eating.

But I would say I was definitely at this point straddling the two worlds. I was still doing all my fitness regimented dieting and exercise plans, but at the same time, in my spare time, consuming all this pro-recovery, anti-diet type information and being kind of one foot in, one foot out of both of the worlds.

Chris Sandel: Yeah.

00:11:09

Losing her period + why she reached out to Seven Health

Hermione: I would like to mention, too – I probably should’ve mentioned this at the beginning – that I didn’t have a period this entire time, and I didn’t know any better. For the first little bit of that – basically, I started birth control when I was very young, about 14 or so, for my skin. It was always for my skin, never because I had terrible period symptoms and stuff like that. Then I think about the point when I was 25 or 26, I made the decision to get off the pill because as the fitness world transformed into being more ‘natural’ and holistic and things like that, it’s like, “Oh, that’s the thing to do. I need to get off the pill.” And then I realised I didn’t have a period anymore.

So I don’t know at what point I didn’t have a period, but there were several years prior to contacting you that I did not have a period, for at least 3-4 years. Again, from listening to this recovery stuff, I knew that was a bad thing, but I was still engaging in all my very tried and true behaviours in this pursuit of being as lean as possible.

I think through listening to many podcasts in the recovery world that explained how important it was to have your period – and even Precision Nutrition really emphasize the importance of having a menstrual cycle – I started to make some changes on my own, before reaching out to anybody. I was like, “Okay, what you’re doing is clearly not working. You’re really unhappy.”

I had just moved cities, so I decided to take that as a chance to maybe start new, and I started to no longer restrict carbs and fats – because I was pretty much just doing vegetables and protein and some fats, because the keto thing was really, really popular. I think it still is. I don’t know. I’m not in touch with that world anymore.

Chris Sandel: It still is, yep.

Hermione: It still is, okay. [laughs] So that was a really big thing. Intermittent fasting was a really big thing. Again, from reading some stuff in the recovery community and PN, I stopped intermittent fasting. I started to slowly add in some carbs.

I eventually got my period going, but it was super light. I thought I was doing really well, basically. I thought I was doing all this stuff on my own, and I was like, “Great, high five, you’re starting to get your period again.” Like I said, it was super light. I stayed in that realm, which I guess now, in hindsight, was this semi-recovery type state. But I was still really crazy about food, even though I was eating some carbs again.

And when I say carbs, I’m talking about I was eating some potatoes and rice. Still no bread, no legumes, nothing like that. I was still following the bodybuilding type training, and pretty intensely at that, because I was so scared to see my body change. Even though – again, it’s very funny – my body was changing all the time, going up and going down, just based off of what I was doing and how it encouraged the binge/restrict cycle.

So I lost my period again. I definitely went back into a quite restrictive mode not too long before reaching out to you. I definitely hit this genuine burnout that I hadn’t hit before, where I was just like, “I’m exhausted. I have no motivation. I have no energy. I can’t focus.” My anxiety got out of control. I felt like I couldn’t make a decision to save my life. Then I started to go back to, “What does the recovery community say? I need to give myself permission to eat. I need to make sure I have enough carbs coming in.” So I started to increase the food a little bit again on my own, and I was still listening to you.

I think you had put out a blog post or a podcast basically saying that everybody deserves help, and often the people that need help the most are the ones that think they’re not ‘sick enough’ to warrant reaching out for actual help. That kind of hit a nerve for me. Again, I had gotten my period back again; it was light. But I knew that things still weren’t right. I was waking up in the night to eat all the time. I could not sleep a full night. I still felt the desire to eat large amounts of food all the time. I was still so hyper-focused and obsessed with my body, just so scared of gaining any more weight than I had.

I think it was just a culmination of I was at this point where I was still quite miserable – luckily, some of your material, because I was consuming it in the background, touched a spot in me like “You are not okay and probably need help,” and realising “I don’t think I can do this on my own anymore. I need to talk to somebody.” And I had never talked to anybody in my life about what was going on. It was super, super scary.

So yeah, all of a sudden I think I heard your call for new clients, and I reached out to you.

00:17:22

How she felt about reaching out for help

Chris Sandel: You mentioned that obviously this is something you hadn’t talked to anyone about, and there was a lot of fear and probably shame connected with it. How was it when you first contacted me? How was it finally opening up and reaching out?

Hermione: That was probably one of the scariest things I have done. I don’t know if you remember that basically you had just said ‘hello’ to me or something, and I started crying, I’m pretty sure. [laughs] Pretty sure within the first 5 seconds of meeting, virtually, I was a complete mess because it was so overwhelming to talk about.

I think that’s what happens when you have kept something so buried and so secret for so long, and you don’t know how to talk about it. You don’t know how to express all the thoughts you have and all the feelings you have. Yeah, it was just a super, really overwhelming moment for me, but at the same time, after we got through that initial consultation to see if we would be a good fit to work together, I was really excited too. It was the first time that I felt as though I would be maybe taking a step in the right direction and that I had somebody who was more than competent enough to help me with it.

You also have such a gentle disposition to you and really take any embarrassment or shame, at least for me, that I was feeling, away. You always let me know it was more than okay for me to be emotional or to experience whatever I was experiencing. It was like this very overwhelming moment, but at the same time, once we got through it I was really genuinely excited to start working with you and to get going.

I think that would be something I’d want to say is important to anybody who maybe is at that point. You definitely want to be excited to get going on this, if you can.

Chris Sandel: Had you thought about reaching out to other practitioners, or had you had any experience in the past with someone, even if it hadn’t really got very far? Or this was the first time that this has happened?

Hermione: How do I word that? I had tried to work with PN because, again, as I said, in the fitness world they are actually considered quite a reasonable way to approach health and fitness, and they definitely did help me get to that point of reaching out to you. But unfortunately, I think if you’re somebody who is a disordered eater or has an eating disorder, it just allows you to stay in that. They give you permission to stay in that. It’s not necessarily helping you.

I had initially gone to them thinking they would give me a more balanced approach and help me with this, and I do believe they advertise to that a little bit, but it didn’t work. It literally just let me get hardcore into old habits. That’s when I lost my period again, because I was following their training, their protocol. You know that whole ‘eat to 80% full’ thing? You bet I nailed it. [laughs]

Yeah, you were the first actual really, truly recovery-oriented practitioner I’ve ever worked with.

00:21:35

Working with Chris

Chris Sandel: What was the process of us working together like? And how did it match up or not match up to what your expectations were?

Hermione: I don’t know if I had any expectations. Because I had never done anything like this, I don’t know if I really knew what to expect.

But that said, the process of working with you has been really a lifesaver for me. I think the most important thing you do is you create this really safe environment for somebody just to talk about their experience with absolutely no judgment and all the empathy in the world. It really takes away a lot of the shame – or at least, it took away a lot of the shame I was experiencing about what I was going through. I truly felt heard and listened to.

I think the other really critical thing in the process of working together was that you always gave me – I think in our first session, you just emphasized that if I’m hungry, girl, you need to eat, and please eat. You gave me that permission. And as much as I was trying to do it on my own, I didn’t actually. It took an external person, you, to give me that permission to actually start eating. That was a huge weight off my chest. I could actually start honoring the hunger I was experiencing, and there was no shame about it.

On top of that, every time we got together for an appointment, we would really dive into different issues, I suppose, or we would examine my relationship with fat and examine my relationship with things in body image and challenge different beliefs I had, challenge my ways of thinking.

The journal prompts are super helpful because it makes you take pen to paper and actually get your thoughts out. There were a lot of exercises you gave me that really had me talking to my body, and that whole process was super insightful for me because I realised how little my body trusted me, and that it was completely within its right to not trust me, with what I’d been doing and how much I had been ignoring it and all the signs and signals it gave me to do different behaviours than what I was actually doing.

So just overall, the process with you is a really wonderful process. You’re safe. You feel heard, you feel safe, and you are there to balance all these ideas you have and thoughts and beliefs you have in your head in the safest way, in the warmest way possible.

Chris Sandel: In terms of changes, was it at the pace that you expected it to be? Did things feel like they were taking a long time, was it quick? How was your experience?

Hermione: I think I was stubborn. [laughs] It was weird. I would say it was not a linear process at first, I think. We did two rounds. That first round was more intensive, where we met every 2 weeks for an hour and a half. That was when I had a lot of the journal prompts and things like that.

I feel as though my progress during that time was relatively slow, but there. I was starting to eat again, but I wasn’t fully letting go of certain behaviours. I was still exercising quite a bit, still being very careful about what I was eating. But I was definitely playing more with my food and everything like that, and working through those journal prompts was really insightful. Like I said, I think at that point the biggest progress I made was realising, “Oh my goodness, my body doesn’t trust me in the slightest bit, and no wonder why – look what I’ve done to it.”

Then it was in the second round – we were now meeting once a month at this point – where I feel like my progress really did take off in a positive direction. I do believe that was a combination of laying the groundwork in our first round, but also having enough time getting food and energy into my system and starting to sleep better and to see these small results. My period was coming back a lot stronger, like a real period, and very regular. I knew what it meant to have a heavy day again. I had completely forgotten that that was a thing and was very surprised when it happened.

So yeah, the progress for me was I would say slow at the beginning, and all of a sudden towards the end it really went fast to a place where now, as you know, do I listen to recovery podcasts anymore? No. [laughs] Am I overly concerned with what I look like? Not particularly. Of course I have my moments, but overall I’m pretty neutral about it.

It’s been an interesting ride. I wouldn’t have guessed it would’ve had that projection, but it did.

00:27:30

Improvements she’s noticed

Chris Sandel: You touched on some of these already in passing, but what are the improvements that you’ve noticed over the last year?

Hermione: I feel like there’s a lot. Yeah, I did mention some of them.

One of the big ones is the menstrual cycle. When we started, my menstrual cycle – for the ladies listening, this might be too much information, but I was having it for maybe 2-3 days, and it was super light. Super, super light. Then as we worked together, it progressed to where it became regular, every 26 to 31 days, and it was a solid 5-day event with a progression, starting out light to very heavy and then tapering off to light. I have a real woman’s menstrual cycle, which is exciting. Annoying, but exciting. I’ll deal with it, but it’s a good sign. [laughs]

Beyond that, too, one of the biggest things that drove me crazy and was one of the biggest reasons I came to work with you was the night eating. I literally thought I was losing my mind. I did not understand how I could never just go to bed and stay asleep and not wake up to eat. I guess you won’t understand unless you experience it, but it is extremely annoying. You never have good sleeps, and I truly thought I was broken or I had night eating syndrome or something like that – because of course, you google yourself and what the hell that is, and night eating syndrome is what comes up. [laughs] That’s what I was thinking. “Do I have night eating syndrome?”

But as we started to work and I started introducing more food, eventually that got better. That took a little while to see that result, and I would say it’s been about the past 4-5 months now where for the most part, I don’t need to wake up and eat in the night. Sometimes I do still, but if I do, I know it’s just because I didn’t eat enough that day, and I’m a lot more okay if it does happen. But largely, that doesn’t seem to happen anymore, which is really nice, to sleep 8 hours uninterrupted.

I would say too, I was peeing a lot all the time beforehand. That was an issue that was also causing me to wake up a lot during the night. Again, with the more eating and getting my energy balance in check, that’s improved greatly too. I don’t need to pee all the time. I still am an avid drinker of water and drink quite a bit of water, but it’s not like before where I’d be peeing every hour.

I would say my skin was an interesting one. At first it was fine, and then as I was eating more, I did have a bit of a breakout that I talked to you about. But now my skin’s all good again. It’s all cleared up, so that’s always a positive.

I can focus a lot better during the day. I find my work performance is greatly improved. My mind doesn’t wander all the time. I’m not looking at the clock, waiting for my next meal or drinking a bunch of coffee or tea, trying to suppress the hunger. That’s been a really big improvement and fun. Nor am I using gum or lozenges and things like that to try to suppress my hunger, and that was something I was still doing when we started to talk. I would go through a lot of lozenges to try to make it between my mealtimes and snack times, and it hasn’t been like that for months and months, so that’s really good.

Other improvements, more on the mental level, would be just being a lot more at peace with my body. I wouldn’t sit here and say that I’m on the rooftop screaming, “I love myself! I’m so beautiful!” No. [laughs] But I’m really at a point where I’m quite indifferent to it. I’m very neutral about it. My body is what it is, so that’s fine.

One of the big things too that we worked on was you encouraged me, if I needed to, to get different clothes, clothes that made me feel comfortable, and that was a huge help, honestly, in terms of feeling quite neutral about my body. If you have something that’s digging into you, of course you’re going to notice it and feel it. So that was a really positive thing. Now I’m very indifferent about my body.

Another improvement I experienced – I don’t know if you remember – at first I was quite concerned about what other people in my environment were doing. I would be very conscious of if they were clearly restricting or dieting in any way, and it would really aggravate me and get under my skin. I think it’s because the issue was so close to the surface and so fresh for me. I would have a very visceral reaction to it, and I didn’t like it. It really made me this person I didn’t like. I could feel almost like an anger inside or something, or frustration.

Now I’m at the point where I’m really just “That’s not my body; I have no idea what’s going on with them in their personal life,” and that applies across the board, too, even with social media. I’m really okay seeing anything that could be construed as triggering and realising that I have no idea what’s going on with this person, what’s happening behind the scenes. I really can’t do or say anything, and I also can’t project my own experiences on them. It’s really nice because I feel a lot more calm and even and steadied. I feel way less susceptible to being triggered by things that before would really upset me and really make me feel bad. So that’s been a really, really big improvement too.

Chris Sandel: Nice. In the area of body image, can you identify the things that made the biggest shift there so you could get to that place of body acceptance?

Hermione: You offered a lot of support and resources in that stuff and different accounts to follow. I’m trying to remember specific journal prompts. I know we did a lot of journal prompts on this, but some of the biggest things that we did together was just that exposure to all different body types. I think actively curating an environment – I’m not a huge social media user; I should disclose that. I don’t have Facebook, I don’t have Snapchat, I don’t have Twitter. I really don’t have much. I do have Instagram, I will say that.

In that world, under your recommendation, I ensured there was a diversity in my feed and things that make me feel good. It really is important to see different people in different bodies, living their best life, and seeing that everybody looks good.

I know we worked through, too, realising that nobody is really staring at you that much, as much as you think. [laughs] And then I think it was just the focus on being neutral about my body. We worked on that too, where it was maybe focusing on some features that I actually kind of liked and putting a bit more attention on those, and also stepping outside of myself and becoming a neutral observer on myself and realising it’s not that bad.

So I don’t know. Hopefully that was a clear enough answer. It was something that developed over time with some of the exercises and, as I mentioned, diversifying the content I consume to see quite an array of different bodies and different abilities and different cultures, all that stuff. It is really good. I feel a lot more neutral about it all. It’s just a body.

Chris Sandel: Yeah, that does answer the question, and often it is hard to pinpoint one or two things. You’ve mentioned a lot there, which is great.

00:36:11

How her relationship to exercise has changed

What about then on the exercise front? How has that shifted over the last year?

Hermione: That is an interesting question, and I think we both know that’s shifted a lot for me. You were always super supportive in the sense that I was not willing to let go of exercise as much as – I think you would’ve recommended I stop at the beginning, but I just wasn’t having it. I think that says a lot to you. You never made me do anything I didn’t want to do.

At the beginning I was still quite regimented in my exercise routine, as much as I thought it was more of a rational approach or healthy approach to exercise. But I would say in the last few months is where, again, the biggest improvement with my relationship to exercise has come. I realised – this one’s difficult to describe – I genuinely enjoy exercising. I really do love moving my body. It is a source of joy for me, and that’s truly aside from trying to change my body. I think that’s really important to say. I realise at this point exercise may or may not have any actual physical changes in my body. What will happen, will happen.

Through working with you – as I said before, I really came from that bodybuilding background, where running and excessive cardio would make you ‘skinny fat’ and wasn’t good for body composition, it would slow your metabolism down, and all that type of information. Together, we got me to this place where that stuff doesn’t matter. I just need to listen to what my body wants to do, and lately, the past few months, I’ve taken up running again and cycling again because I really enjoy these activities. I would rather do those than be lifting weights. That’s just what I feel compelled to do presently at the moment.

I also realised, too, I can be really flexible in my training. If tomorrow I decide, “I really feel like lifting today,” I will go and do that. But if tomorrow I feel like, “No, I want to go cycle for some time outside and be outside and on the trails,” that is what I’m going to do. I feel so much more relaxed. It doesn’t feel so regimented. It feels a lot more based off of what I feel like doing rather than what I think I need to do.

Actually, we haven’t discussed this, but recently I had something gastro going on and I wasn’t well for a period of time. I couldn’t keep food in me; it wasn’t fun. During that time, I could not exercise. There was just no way. I had zero energy. Before, in the past, I would really panic about something like that, and I was really okay with the fact – I was telling myself, “No, you’re absolutely not exercising. You need to just focus on getting better and getting through your workday. That is more than enough.” In the past, I would be just freaking out, if not pushing myself to train through that.

In fact, I even had the reverse thought. I was really scared that I wasn’t fuelling my body enough. I was like, “No, no, no, we’ve been working so hard on always giving you adequate fuel.” [laughs]

And even now, when it comes to traveling and visiting friends and family in other parts, before I would still be trying to squeeze in exercise, and now it’s just, no, I’m going to these places to visit people or to experience a new country or something like that, and exercise isn’t taking up that time. It’s not a necessity that has to happen every day. If I have the time to do it, for sure I’ll go for a run or bike or whatever, but if it’s a pretty packed trip, if I’m supposed to be visiting people, it’s not taking up that time.

I won’t allow it to take that time, and that has been a huge change too. It’s not something that has to happen every single day, all the time. It happens when it can. That’s been really, really nice to feel as though I’m in charge of my exercise. My exercise is not in charge of me.

00:40:48

How her relationship to food has changed

Chris Sandel: You’ve talked a little bit about the food, obviously talking about that you were very low carb for a while, and then that started to change, and you mentioned about the night eating and how that has now ceased. What else changed in terms of your food, and maybe not just the eating per se, but your perspective around food and how you think about food?

Hermione: Again, I feel like this is a big question, but super important. Also, I don’t want it to be triggering to anybody either, but for me, again, I came from a bodybuilding background. You’re basically having eggs, chicken, fish, or beef with every single one of your meals and some veggies with every single one of your meals.

Something that happened as we started working together and I started challenging a lot of the food rules I had – at first I was still kind of following my typical plan and proportions, but just including a bit more variety with the choices. Maybe instead of having rice, I would have pretzels, or maybe – there was one point where you really encouraged me to have some muffins or some baked goods with my breakfast, just to see how I feel and how I responded. Lo and behold, I didn’t die. Nothing happened. I actually think I functioned pretty great. [laughs] So that was good.

But I came to this realisation that I was put off by the meat and wanted more fats, more carbs. I started adding in all this variety of food again. Also, fruits were quite off limits for me, so I started eating a bunch of different fruits again, mango and pineapple and melon and watermelon. Before, I thought “Oh, no, there’s too much sugar in all these fruits. It’s just like chocolate bars, basically” – which is, again, in hindsight, crazy to think that.

I’ve progressed – now I would say I would eat more what one would probably consider vegan, even though I don’t like to subscribe to a label. It’s been a real 180 in my eating habits where no longer am I having five, six meals a day with a portion of animal-based protein; my eating is a lot more flexible. I’m enjoying legumes again and bread, still with my potatoes and rice and all that jazz and all sorts of variety of fruits and vegetables. I eat desserts too. My eating has changed so much. It’s just completely polar opposite to what it was.

I really want to clarify this, too: I’m not eating the way I currently am in hopes of attaining a certain body shape or things like that. It’s truly based off of I love animals so much. I really would like to respect them and treat them with as much kindness as I can. But that said, I just went on a visit back home and I was staying with my family and also some friends, and if they were cooking chicken for dinner, I would eat that. I didn’t say no to that. That was okay. They’re cooking me a homemade meal; I have eaten this stuff in my life. That is fine.

And I have no problem, if all of a sudden I don’t feel good and realise I need to again change my eating habits so that I feel better, to do it. I’m not super religious to anything. The amount of variety I’m getting now is pretty unbelievable.

Chris Sandel: I think that’s useful to flag up. We’ve had conversations about this and we’ve had email exchanges about it as well in terms of this is the way you’re eating at the moment, and it makes complete sense. You had a really long time of eating chicken and fish five, six times a day, so the fact that you’re having a time – which I don’t know how long it will go on for or if it’s going to be an indefinite amount of time or it’s going to be more short-lived – where you’re like, “I feel more like some beans and pulses and some other things I haven’t been eating.”

This has been a big part of it, like being able to listen to your body and not have your identity mashed up with what you eat or how you eat. If you’re getting feedback that this isn’t working, you know that you can then change it and have the skills to be able to do that because you know how to listen to your body.

Hermione: 100%, I really do agree with that. Even, as I said, on this visit, I was eating chicken and pork and things like that that were prepared for me, and my body was just fine eating it. Nothing happened. Nothing crazy. There was no fear in eating it. I really do know now that, because of all the work we did, I’m listening to my body. If at one point I feel as though something is off, pivot, change, go with it. Right now I’m eating in a way that’s making me feel really good and feels super abundant.

I’d also like to caveat that it feels super abundant. I really feel as though I have all the choice in the world. I do not feel limited by this. I think it would be a very different story if I still felt limited, and some people may in that context, and that is totally understandable. But for me, it’s just because it’s so opposite to what I’ve been doing and all the foods I told myself I can never have. What is it in legumes that people tell you is super bad and will give you cancer?

Chris Sandel: Phytates.

Hermione: Phytates. I really bought into the whole paleo thing, too, like grains are bad and unnatural and all this stuff. Now I have all the grains. I have oatmeal and quinoa and farro and white rice and brown rice and wild rice, everything, all the grains. Toast, bread, you name it, and I’m just fine. Nothing bad has happened to me. My body seems to actually quite enjoy it.

I’ve even noticed, coming back to the exercise question, because I’ve been getting more into running, it’s really good for my energy levels when I’m out running. I do good on it. So I guess that’s where I’m at with food.

00:47:26

Other ways her life has shifted since working with Chris

Chris Sandel: Nice. Are there any other ways that we haven’t covered that your life has shifted, or things that you’re doing now that you weren’t able to do before?

Hermione: Yeah, in the sense that I don’t have to be so routine and regimented anymore, and I don’t stress about it. Before, I think sometimes I liked to present an image of somebody who was very ‘go with the flow’, but that wasn’t true at all. If there was any disruption to my routine, I’d be freaking out and trying to calculate different ways to get in that exercise time or try to avoid eating out with people.

It’s just not like that anymore. If something comes up and I can’t exercise, no big deal, and I don’t need to make up for it. If I’m out visiting with friends or somebody suggests going out to eat, that is no problem. I will go if I can and I’m not busy with work or something like that.

Even just as simple as going on little road trips. I don’t need to pack an entire large cooler of my ‘safe’ foods to eat. I can stop and grab something from probably a fast food place and be just fine with that.

It’s funny; recently I’ve been getting comments from some friends back home, and because, as I said, you’re the only person I’ve really talked to about these issues, they’re not quite too sure what the change is going on in me except for the fact that I seem a lot calmer. That’s the comment I get, like “You seem like you’re doing good. You’re really calm.” I’m actually just sitting down and taking time without being this perpetual motion machine and very antsy. It’s really nice.

Another big change before was that I would avoid situations where friends would be going out and drinking – and I do want to say, I’m not a big drinker. I don’t particularly enjoy drinking, but now the difference is that I will go out and have a beer or two. It’s not like I’m drinking a ton of drinks, but I’ll actually stay out late, having those fun times with friends and being like my younger self again, and that’s really nice. I’m not so caught up with how I’m looking or what the impact is going to be on my body. I have a lot more freedom and flexibility in my life.

Also, I went on a trip down south a few months ago – pre-COVID pandemic, just to throw that caveat out there. At the time, I was probably midway through us working together. You knew I was kind of nervous about it and having to put on a swimsuit. That was a really good thing for me to do, too, because my former self would try at all costs to avoid going on any trips down to tropical countries because I didn’t want to be seen in a swimsuit. Even when I was at my smallest and tiny and had ‘nothing to hide’, I would avoid it.

It’s so funny because that trip – I wouldn’t say I was 100% totally comfortable, but after doing that trip, I realised nobody died, I was fine, and I had actually a great time. It really doesn’t matter what I looked like. It’s come to the point now – I’ve told you, I’m even starting to wear crop tops or things that show a bit of my midriff when I go out in public, and never in my life would I have done that, ever. [laughs]

I just feel comfortable enough and just “Eh, okay.” It is what it is, and I feel comfortable like this, that I can do it. I feel a lot more freedom. That’s probably the best way to put it. I just really feel free to do what I want to do without being overwhelmed with these thoughts of “I don’t look the part,” “I’m not good enough,” “I’m not thin enough,” “If I do X, Y, or Z, all my progress is going to be lost,” and blah, blah, blah. It’s not that way anymore, and it frees up so much mental space too, as I said.

This is something I want to talk about – when I was in the thick of my eating disorder, I’d be constantly consuming information about the best diet, the best exercise, blah, blah, blah. Then once I was starting to realise “maybe there’s not something particularly wrong with me that needs to be fixed” and starting to get into the recovery content, I was consuming recovery content nonstop.

Now I’m at a point where none of that appeals to me anymore. I am interested in so many more things. I’m actually into politics now. Who knew? [laughs] I have so much more space for other subject matter in my life, and it’s really nice. It’s such a break and feels like a nice breath of fresh air, really.

Chris Sandel: Yeah, there’s a ton that you’ve gone through there in terms of changes. It’s so lovely to hear everything about that.

00:53:10

Hermione’s advice for anyone struggling with an eating disorder

The final question I have, and part of the reason we’re recording this, is because I’m taking on new clients. I just want to find out from you, what would you say to someone who is listening to this and they maybe hear themselves or a little bit of themselves in your story? What would you suggest for them? And it doesn’t necessarily have to be “work with Chris,” but is there any advice or feedback based on your experience that you’d want to give that person?

Hermione: There’s so much I would want to tell that person. If they are like how I was, especially if you’re in that one foot in recovery and one foot still into whatever you’re doing, trying to pursue any kind of body goals and weight control – if you’re feeling alone or like you’re broken, or if you are missing your menstrual cycle or waking up in the night to eat, and you have this general weight of feeling out of control, I would just really say the best thing you can do for yourself is reaching out for help from whoever, but as long as it is somebody who is an experienced practitioner and really knows how to be there for you and to create a safe space.

I think one of the most important things for me and where I am is because of the relationship we have. I think it’s so critical that they find somebody they can talk to and open up about this, and somebody who can just help them along in the way they need. You never forced me to do or to change in any particular way that I wasn’t ready for. You were just always there to be a support and answer any questions I had and challenge my thoughts, but always there to talk to me about that.

You won’t regret it, and you genuinely will get – it sounds so silly saying that you’ll get your life back, but you do. You find a little bit more who you are and what you actually care about. It’s so funny because I thought at the time that that was all stuff I cared about, and it’s kind of hilarious to be sitting here today realising I don’t care at all about that stuff anymore. I still am an active person and love exercising, but it’s in a completely different lens now than what it was. I’m not so hyper-focused on it.

Oh my God, there was something else I forgot to mention too. Before, I ate everything separate. If you’re a person who has to have your portion of veggies, your portion of carbs, your portion of protein, and your portion of fat all separate so you have an idea of the quantity you’re consuming, maybe you’re in a really good place and that helps you with your goals – awesome – but if you’re on the opposite end, where you’re feeling out of control around food and you’re doing that, please reach out for help.

Now it’s so funny; I can just eat a chilli or some kind of stew where everything’s mixed in, and you don’t really quite know what proportion you’re having of what, and it’s really liberating. You don’t need to know the breakdown.

I don’t think it’s a choice anybody would regret, and it is true, as you’ve said – there’s no such thing as ‘sick enough’. If something is off to you, please reach out to somebody. And I would recommend you just based off my experience. It was really nice to have somebody who is genuinely a compassionate soul to talk to about this, and someone who really does understand. I guess that would be what I would say.

Chris Sandel: Nice. Thank you for coming on and talking about this and talking about your journey. I’ve loved working with you over the last year. It’s so nice to hear where you are now versus when we first started together and those tears within those first 5 seconds.

Hermione: [laughs] It’s a big change.

Chris Sandel: [laughs] It is a big change, yeah. Thank you for coming on and doing this. I really appreciate it.

Hermione: It was my pleasure. I really hope somebody, just someone, takes something from it. I know I personally found these client calls useful. It was actually one of the tipping points, I think, for me to reach out to you. There were a few things, but I remember listening to one of these conversations on your podcast with a client of yours.

She was talking about her art and getting back into her art and finding herself, and how so many more people cared about her art than when she was posting images of her body and stuff like that, and that really resonated with me as well – somebody who found themselves again, outside of what you think at the time is something that’s a big interest and all-consuming in your life.

I hope somebody else maybe has a little bit of a – not an epiphany, but just something somebody can resonate with a little bit and know that it is possible. I think that’s one of the scariest things; you feel as though it’s not possible or too scary. I just want to say it is possible. It’s a choice and something you have to choose every day. Not to take away the hard work that goes into it. Yeah, there will be moments that you struggle and it’s hard, especially if – maybe your body won’t change, but maybe it will, and it’s hard. But it’s also worth it. It’s possible. I guess, too, a gentle reminder that your body changing is not the end of the world.

Chris Sandel: That’s a lovely way to end it. Thanks again.

Hermione: Thank you.

Chris Sandel: I hope you found that conversation helpful. Hermione has noticed such a shift in the last year, and I’m so proud of everything she’s been able to accomplish. It really is amazing for me to get to hear everything she shared and realise how much of a difference things have made and how different her life is now.

As I mentioned at the top of the show, I’m now taking on clients. If you’re interested in working together or just finding out more, you can head to seven-health.com/help. That is it for this week. I’ll be back next week with another new episode. Stay safe, and I’ll catch you soon.

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