Episode 247: Today on Real Health Radio, I'm speaking with Elisa Oras. Elisa recovered from bulimia, orthorexia, and extreme dieting and we talk about her experience as well as the clients she now works with.
Elisa Oras is an eating disorder recovery coach who helps people fully recover from eating disorders and gain back their food freedom. She fully recovered from bulimia, orthorexia, and extreme dieting 7 years ago and is passionate about helping others to do the same. She shares her knowledge and experience through her Youtube channel Follow the Intuition and website followtheintuiton.com.
In her book BrainwashED, she talks about diet-induced eating disorders and how to recover step by step. Her approach to recovery is combined with nutritional rehabilitation, brain retraining and unbrainwashing from diet culture messages. Her main goal as a coach is to help you start listening and trusting your body and to make peace with food so you can achieve lasting full recovery.
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Chris Sandel: Welcome to Episode 247 of Real Health Radio. You can find the show notes and the links talked about as part of this episode at www.seven-health.com/247.
Before we get started, I want to mention that I’m currently taking on new clients. I specialise in helping clients to overcome eating disorders, disordered eating, chronic dieting, body dissatisfaction and poor body image, exercise compulsion and overexercising, and also helping clients to regain their periods. If you want help with any of these areas or you simply want to improve your relationship with food or body or exercise, then please get in contact. You can head to www.seven-health.com/help, and there you can read about how I work with clients and apply for a free initial chat. The address, again, is www.seven-health.com/help, and I’ll also include that in the show notes.
Hey, everyone. Welcome back to another episode of Real Health Radio. I’m your host, Chris Sandel. I’m a nutritionist that specialises in recovery from disordered eating and eating disorders, or really just helping anyone who has a messy relationship with food and body and exercise.
The last couple of weeks have been rebroadcast episodes because I have been away. I went to Lisbon for a week to hang out with a friend. This was a trip that was meant to happen back in November for my 40th, but a week before I was meant to go, Ali was thrown off her horse and needed surgery, so that didn’t happen at that time, and this was then the make-up trip.
I had an amazing time. Nick, the guy I stayed with, is someone I met in a nightclub in Sydney when I was 18, and when I then moved to London, he moved out a year later. I’ve lived with him at various points over the years. He was the best man at my wedding. So we have a long history, and it was so nice to have time to chat and laugh and just be together. I’d never been to Lisbon before, but it’s an incredible city. Lots of lovely food and wine bars and really friendly people, and fairly cheap for Europe. Much cheaper than London, especially as I wasn’t paying for accommodation.
The weather wasn’t as good as hoped, so we didn’t get to spend that much time at the beach; I think we got there for one day or part of one day. But it was just really nice to have time. This was the first time I’ve been away like this since Ramsay was born, and to just have no time pressures. For example, one night we went and met some friends and went to a wine bar for a couple of drinks, and then five hours later we were still there. The time had just flown by. I got to go to a club for the first time in years and hear incredible music on a huge sound system. And the fact that we got back home at 6 a.m. didn’t matter because I didn’t have a child to look after the next day.
So it was just really nice to have time away, and I’m hoping that trips out to Lisbon can now be a fairly regular occurrence happening multiple times a year, if possible.
Now I’m back, the new episodes should be a bit more regular again. Today on the show, it is a guest interview. Today’s guest is Elisa Oras. Elisa is an eating disorder recovery coach who helps people fully recover from eating disorders and gain back their food freedom. She fully recovered from bulimia, orthorexia, and extreme dieting seven years ago and is passionate about helping others to do the same. She shares her knowledge and experience through her YouTube channel called Follow the Intuition and also her website of the same name, www.followtheintuition.com.
In her book BrainwashED, she talks about dieting-induced eating disorders and how to recover step by step. Her approach to recovery is combined with nutritional rehabilitation, brain retraining, and un-brainwashing from diet culture messages. Her main goal as a coach is to help you start listening and trusting your body and to make peace with food so you can achieve lasting, full recovery.
I’ve been aware of Elisa for a number of years. While I’ve never been a huge one for YouTube and consuming content in this way, many of my clients do and they have commented how helpful Elisa’s YouTube channel is. This conversation is largely about Elisa’s recovery and then using certain aspects of it as a jumping-off point to talk about many of the things we notice with the clients that we work with. We touch on intermittent fasting, restriction, purging, and how exercise can be a form of purging; extreme hunger; orthorexia; bulimia; how we eat becoming part of our identity; journalling; the power of being curious; and much more.
I think there’s a lot that can be learnt from Elisa’s story, so I’m glad she was able to come on the show and share it. At the end, I have two recommendations that I want to share, but for now, here’s my conversation with Elisa Oras.
Hey, Elisa. Thanks so much for joining me on Real Health Radio today. I’m really excited to be chatting with you.
Elisa Oras: Hi, Chris. I’m so happy to be here.
Chris Sandel: You are someone that many of my clients have found useful in their recovery journey, and that could be whether through your book, called BrainwashED, or through your YouTube channel. Many of my clients have really related to your content. I know you’ve also had your own recovery journey, and this is a bigger part about what you write about and talk about, and this led to the kind of work you do today.
For today’s conversation, I want to talk about your story and your experience with an eating disorder and the subsequent recovery, and also just going through many of the areas that you now work on with clients or you talk about in your content.
Elisa Oras: Yeah, tell me what you want to hear or where to start.
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Chris Sandel: Let’s start with you. What was your relationship with food like when you were a young kid, when you were growing up?
Elisa Oras: Before teenager years, definitely I was a normal eater, intuitive eater. I don’t remember ever my parents restricting me on food or telling me that you shouldn’t eat some food or some foods make you fat or something like that. Definitely my mom had periods when she was dieting and everything, but it didn’t affect me when I was a very young child.
But when I was a teenager, this is a time when your body starts to develop and all those hormonal changes, and you gain weight. Also, maybe the approval of others and wanting to be liked and wanting to belong and wanting to be accepted and everything – this definitely triggered me to want to change my body or maybe start to think about dieting and maybe losing weight and everything. This is how it really started for me, when I was a teenager and went through those body changes and everything.
Chris Sandel: Was there a specific diet that you started with, or was there a specific comment or situation or moment that kicked it off?
Elisa Oras: Yeah, actually there was this specific diet. Back then I didn’t know it’s called intermittent fasting, but basically now, looking back, I understand that this is exactly what it was. How it started was that I attended a dance class with one of my best friends, and my best friend has some health issues and she had to take some hormonal medications that caused her to gain weight. But obviously, other people didn’t know it. Everybody assumes that you must be eating too much and everything.
I remember my dance teacher – actually, she was a very nice and sweet teacher, but she also was affected from the diet culture and everything. I remember my dance teacher told her, “If you want to lose weight, then maybe you can stop eating after 6:00 and drink a lot of water.” I heard it, and because me and my friend did everything together, we started this diet together when I was maybe 13, 14, something like that. I stopped eating after 6 p.m. and I went to bed hungry, my stomach was growling.
But also, I didn’t see it as a diet because throughout the day, I seemed to eat everything I wanted. I ate pizza or candy or whatever I wanted during the day, but I just had this very strict rule that I shouldn’t eat after 6 p.m., and this is what I did. I was able to keep up with this for half a year. Later, when I became bulimic, I couldn’t understand how I could do it, because my hunger at that point was so overwhelming that I was binge eating.
But I guess because I was healthy, it was my first diet, it’s very normal that your first diet is like this honeymoon period. The weight comes off. You’re not binge prone. You’re not so food obsessed and everything. So yeah, I kept it up for like half a year.
Chris Sandel: What did your parents say? Were you typically eating dinner before that, or were they saying anything when you said “Hey, I’m now no longer going to eat after 6 p.m.”?
Elisa Oras: I don’t remember exactly, and if you ask them too, it’s a little bit surprising, like I truly don’t remember any big concerns or something like “Why are you not eating?” But I do remember I told my mom, “I’m not eating after 6 p.m.” and she told me, “You are doing so great” or like “How are you able to do it?”, almost congratulating me.
Chris Sandel: Oh God.
Elisa Oras: I have such a good relationship with my mom, and she’s not this crazy diet-obsessed person, but I guess she just didn’t know to look out for something like this as a very disordered behaviour or a big red flag. So it wasn’t an issue.
Also, since I was growing up and I had – my stepdad, my mom wasn’t married to him, but I guess he was my stepdad. He was from another country and he had his own cuisines and stuff he liked to prepare. I didn’t like the food that he prepared, or maybe I was just rebelling against him or something like that, so maybe that was also how I explained why I don’t want to eat or something. And I guess my mom didn’t want to force me to eat the food I didn’t enjoy or something. But clearly, I amassed this to my “I just don’t want to eat after 6 p.m.” It wasn’t so much that I wasn’t hungry or I couldn’t eat his food or something.
Chris Sandel: How were you rationalising at that time? Was it purely about “I’m wanting to lose weight”? Were you telling yourself “This is healthier”? How did you think about this change you had made?
Elisa Oras: I guess at that age, I wasn’t so aware of ‘what is health’. I wasn’t concerned about the health. I was more concerned about losing weight, looking differently, being thinner, all that. That was the reason.
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Chris Sandel: So what happened then after that six-month honeymoon period?
Elisa Oras: After the six months – also, during all this time, I went to bed hungry, my stomach was growling. I had sleep issues. It was so hard to fall asleep because my stomach was so empty. And every morning, I would wake up like 6 a.m., much earlier before my school so I could have an hour to eat. [laughs] Like cereal and sandwiches and everything. And I’m so glad, actually, I did, because this was the thing that saved my body somewhat from complete starvation.
But the stress was there all the time. The food obsession started. I remember one day, we had this school thing or performance or something, and one day I couldn’t eat from like 12 p.m. And since my rule of not eating after 6 p.m. was so strict, I was not eating after 12 p.m., at noon. Those things started to happen as well. I guess my body caught up even more with the starvation and restriction and everything.
I remember one particular time I was out with my friends, we were out and about and having fun and spending a lot of energy as a teenager and going around and everything, and I got home pretty late. It was like 11 p.m. or something. I had spent so much energy; I was so tired, I was exhausted, and I was so, so hungry. And I knew, “Oh my God, it will be so hard to fall asleep because all I can think about is food.” I was home alone as well, so that was a big factor. I was like, “Nobody will see me.”
So I remember I started to eat – I don’t know exactly what it was, but maybe at first it was like one apple. Then I was like, “There’s this other food. Maybe I will have a portion of that.” And then I just kept on eating more and more and more, and I just couldn’t stop myself. I’m an intelligent, rational person, and I couldn’t stop myself. This is your body taking over because you’re so, so hungry.
I ate to a point where I was physically so full, so painfully full, and it was so uncomfortable that I realised, oh my God, I had my first binge episode. And this was even before I had my bulimia and everything. Bulimia happened after. This was just my starting a diet, and then I started to be this ‘emotional eater’ and occasional binge eater, overeater. This is how it started. That was my first binge and feeling out of control.
Chris Sandel: So then the next day, was there you trying to compensate and “I’m going to eat less or I’m going to up the exercise”? Was it that immediate?
Elisa Oras: Yeah, definitely. I felt so guilty. I told myself the same night that “From tomorrow, I’m going to be back to not eating after 6 p.m. This is the last time. It’s just one time and I will be back to the same regime and everything.” But since my body is so resilient to reject restriction – which is so good, I see now – I tried to keep up with the not eating after 6 p.m. but I couldn’t. Over time, I guess I stopped trying and I resumed with my ‘normal’ eating, and slowly the weight came back on. Because yeah, for me, I was normal weight before, but I lost quite a significant amount of weight for me in the six months when I wasn’t eating after 6 p.m. The weight came back on as I resumed eating, which is good.
Chris Sandel: You said when you didn’t have dinner, that didn’t really raise any red flags with your mum. Did the fact you’d lost weight raise any flags? Or that was also congratulated?
Elisa Oras: I don’t remember my parents congratulating my weight. I don’t know if they saw anything problematic, because I didn’t maybe look emaciated or underweight. So maybe that’s the reason.
Chris Sandel: Then how did it progress from there? What else happened from there?
Elisa Oras: From that point onward, I wasn’t a normal eater anymore. Especially because I gained all the weight back, I always thought that now I had to control my weight, otherwise I would keep gaining weight. I kept on being this occasional dieter, and I labelled myself as an emotional eater, being a food addict, being addicted to sugar and stuff like that. If I was searching the symptoms I was having online, the label of ‘emotional eater’ or being a food addict is what I found. So this is what I resonated with.
But now I understand the impact of restriction can be exactly the same as we commonly know the emotional eating symptoms. They can actually be all symptoms of restriction, and same with food addiction. So it wasn’t emotional eating or food addiction; it was actually because of restriction, because of dieting. But over the next five years or so, I was this occasional dieter. I didn’t drastically lose weight or become underweight, but my eating wasn’t normal.
I want to stress this because many people think that eating disorders look a certain way or you can tell by looking at a person that they have an eating disorder. But it’s like, no. Was I a normal eater, even though I didn’t have the classic eating disorder like anorexia? No, I wasn’t a normal eater. So for me, you don’t need a label. That is already disordered eating or a form of eating disorder. It’s not a certain look. You don’t have to have those drastic behaviours to have a serious problem.
Chris Sandel: Definitely. I think there’s both the look, as you say, from an aesthetic standpoint, but even so much of the way people eat today under the guise of being healthy or whatever it is, is disordered.
Elisa Oras: Exactly.
Chris Sandel: I have a fairly keen eye for these things just because of doing this for so long. It’s amazing how much this is a serious problem, how rampant it really is, and yet most people just don’t even notice it.
Elisa Oras: Yeah, because those things are celebrated, like healthy eating, exercising a lot, losing weight. All those things are commented on as something good, you’re taking care of your health, you’re being healthy. That’s the reason. And this is why it goes undetected, because you think there’s something wrong with you, because other people say, “You are eating so healthy. Well done not eating after 6 p.m. Well done losing weight.” Nobody actually cares to ask, “What is it really doing to you? What are their behaviours and mindsets behind it?” That’s the trick, because it’s normalised.
Chris Sandel: Yeah, and you’re not living in that person’s head, so you don’t know what they’re experiencing. Someone from the outside may have heard that you weren’t eating after 6 p.m. and just thought, “Oh wow, she’s got it made. It’s working really well for her”, and yet they didn’t know how challenging that was and what your inner experience was like.
Elisa Oras: And the focus is not on health at all. It’s just losing weight, looking different, looking ‘better’. It’s just what other people think of me, how I think my worth is in my weight and how I look. That’s the real issue behind it.
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Chris Sandel: How did it then morph into the next stage of this? You’ve mentioned already that at some latter stage it turned into bulimia, so how did that occur?
Elisa Oras: When I was in my early twenties, I went through stress. That big stress basically was because I had a big heartbreak, because I broke up with my boyfriend back then. To me it was a big heartbreak, something I had never gone through. It was something I never expected. I had big stress. I would classify this as depression symptoms. I went through a whole year drinking too much, and I really think I had an alcohol problem and everything.
So I went through stress and I developed some health issues. I had acne on my face, my hair was falling out, I had big stomach issues, digestion problems. And now, looking back, I see of course these are some of the most common stress symptoms. Digestive issues, the hormonal acne, hair falling out. But back then I didn’t see the connection or I didn’t know about it, and I started to blame food.
I took some medication for my acne, but of course, the side effects are hard. Your skin gets so dry, and also I didn’t see improvements for many months. I was like, “I want to heal myself from the inside out and I don’t want to just take some medication with side effects.” Of course, it had good intentions. I didn’t want to lose weight or punish my body. I wanted to be healthy and I didn’t want to take drugs with side effects. This is how it starts, with some good intention initially or with some innocent changes.
I started to, of course, Google. Google helped me to recover with all the information I learned, but also Google kind of caused my eating disorder because you can come across so much information. It’s kind of like what you look for, you will find from Google. And when you start to look for what is causing your acne, you will find so much information. I don’t want to say none of the things can cause any symptoms for people or something, but it’s part of my story and how it started for me specifically.
It started with health issues and then starting to change my diet based on what I learned online. Like how some certain products can cause you acne or digestive issues and you should eat less this and leave out this, leave out milk or leave out sugar, stuff like that, and then animal products. I started to restrict whole food groups and everything. Because I had this good intention, I didn’t see it as a problem or an eating disorder or something. That’s the scariest thing, because it’s so subtle how it starts.
Then you are a year or two years in, binging and purging, and you’re looking back and you have no idea, like “How did I get to this point?” But yeah, I started to change my diet and my food, and the more I started to restrict food – this is where I started to restrict even more than back in the day when I just did my intermittent fasting but ate whatever I wanted. I started to eat very clean, pure, vegetarian, then vegan, then raw food, then fruitarian, then water fasting, stuff like that.
The more I started to restrict food or occasionally had some other foods, I started to have digestion problems and issues. Because obviously if you don’t eat some foods for some time, they can cause symptoms. And I didn’t realise this. For example, if you don’t eat some animal products and then you start to include them, of course you can initially have some symptoms developing. But it’s just you haven’t eaten this food for so long. But I just blamed it on “I’m now so pure, and that’s proof that those foods are toxic for me or something.”
Chris Sandel: That is such a vicious cycle that people can get into, in the sense they ‘prove’ to themselves how much that’s a bad food or why they can’t have it, or that they already knew this, and “See? This is why I can’t have that food.” I think it is because of then that specific food that has been missing as well as the fact that overall, digestion is getting worse and worse off the back of there’s not enough energy coming in to run digestion in the way it was run before. So even just your baseline digestion is bad, and then it’s much worse for the things you’re not eating on a regular basis.
Elisa Oras: Exactly. You convince yourself that “See? This is the proof that I can’t eat those foods, and it is proof that those foods are toxic because I’m so clean and I’m so pure, and now my body is clearly telling me all those signals intuitively, what is good and what is bad.” But actually, your body has just got weaker. Your digestion has got weaker. That’s actually the reality.
Chris Sandel: So continue going from here; how did it go from there?
Elisa Oras: I get done dieting, I get done restricting. Again, I remember this one particular day – I was working away from home. I live in Estonia, but I was working in Finland for a summer, and I was alone in one house. Then I could obviously be very obsessed with my dieting and restriction and meals, my eating programmes and whatever. Also, nobody was there to judge me, how I was eating, or tell me “Is this normal?” or whatever. So this is where I got even more strict.
Because yeah, I had acne. Nobody wants to have acne. Everybody wants to have normal, clear skin, and it can affect your self-esteem and everything. So of course I wanted to not have acne. It was such a huge stress for my life.
But I remember one particular day, I went to the shop, I bought all the ‘processed’ food, the junk foods that I thought were so bad, so unhealthy for me. Everything I restricted, everything I wanted to buy and actually eat. So I bought all those foods, I went back to my house and I just lost it. I had a big binge eating episode. I would eat and eat and I would get so uncomfortably full.
And this is the first time I purged. Rationally, I was like, “Oh my God, what are you doing? This is what bulimics do.” I understood that this is bad, this is wrong, but I felt so uncomfortably full and so guilty, and it was just like I didn’t know what else to do. Also, I swore to myself that this is just one time, I can get control of this, it’s not going to happen going forward. But since I didn’t stop restriction, I didn’t see the connection there.
Those binge episodes started to happen more frequently, and also the purging. I tried my best to not binge or purge, but when people have this bulimia, they are rational people, but it’s not about “You should just not do it. Don’t you know you’ll feel bad?” Like, no, your body, the biological drive to eat takes over, and then of course you feel so full and so guilty, purging seems at that moment like the only option. So this is how the bulimia part started.
Chris Sandel: It then does become so easy to rationalise why it’s going on. Most of the time you don’t realise the restriction is the thing that’s driving it, but yeah, as you said there, “The first time it happened I told myself it would never happen again” and then in a fairly short amount of time, it’s a regular occurrence.
Elisa Oras: Yeah, because you don’t stop the underlying reason that is the dieting and restriction.
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Chris Sandel: How long did that then go on for, before you started to genuinely find some answers for why this is occurring and start to turn things around?
Elisa Oras: I always wanted to recover. I never thought, “Oh, now I found this way I can eat whatever I want and just purge and get rid of it.” I always wanted to recover, I always wanted to find a solution. But somehow, in my twisted mind, I thought that eating raw food and clean food would be the option, because actually this is what I heard from many people who were in that community. Many of those people had had eating disorders before.
Also, since they recommended “Don’t restrict calories, you have to eat a lot of calories because if you are vegan or raw vegan, undereating is a big thing why many people fail.” Many people maybe got rid of their binges or whatever, but that mentality convinced me that “Now I can recover from my eating disorder in the same way. It’s just because the food is too delicious or there are these toxins or the MSG that makes your taste buds change and you crave those foods, you want them more and more because they’re so tasty or something.”
I really thought eating raw food and eating very clean would be the answer, and that was the biggest thing that held me back from full recovery. I was very close-minded in what would make me recover. I was convinced, “How can I make myself eat the raw food and eat as clean as possible? Because it’s actually the food’s fault why I keep on binging because it’s too delicious.”
Chris Sandel: I think that’s something a lot of clients struggle with, where there is this idea of we’re living in a food environment that we’ve never lived in before, and that our brains weren’t wired to be exposed to these kinds of foods. That really takes hold, and I think there is a lot of that and a lot of struggle with the thought of “But to eat cookies or ice cream or pizza as part of recovery, I’m just not able to do that. Humans are not meant to do that” and it then becomes a way that you can rationalise why the method you’re trying – in your case, the raw veganism or raw food – is the right method. “I just need to tweak it, I’m just missing some little bit of this and then I’m going to get there.”
Elisa Oras: Yeah. Because at the same time, of course I was involved with the raw food community, and also in Estonia, I was also part of the raw food community in Estonia and me and my friend did raw food classes and we would teach raw food recipes. We published a raw food cookbook and went to raw food festivals, or meet and greets and stuff like that. You are so in it, so it’s so easy to be convinced if there are other people around you or your friends and people who you know are doing the same thing and appear to not have the symptoms of an eating disorder. So I thought, “It’s just me. It’s not causing it, but something is wrong with how I am doing it.”
Chris Sandel: Totally. As you say there, when your whole identity, when your whole community, your support groups are all entangled in this thing, that makes it even more challenging to walk away, because it’s not like someone who is simply choosing to eat a different way; this is like, “Okay, I feel unable to eat non-raw food in front of my raw food friends.” I think it adds another layer of complexity.
Elisa Oras: Yeah. Actually, in Estonia, I was invited to talk about orthorexia when I recovered, or when I was almost done with my recovery, and talk about orthorexia on TV and everything. Then there was so much backlash from the raw food community. I felt like “I am doing something wrong, and everybody’s angry at me because I blamed raw food.” But I wasn’t blaming raw food; I was just blaming the restriction by itself. Restriction can happen through any kind of diet. It’s not just the raw food.
And now I don’t speak to anybody, basically, from that community, because our values and what we do just don’t align anymore. And that’s okay. I’m totally fine with that because I have to choose myself, and I can’t choose something that is hurting me. So maybe it works for them, but it’s not for me. And yeah, it can be like a breakup. So many people feel the same way. They’re like, “I’m part of this fitness industry” or “I’m a model”, blah, blah, blah. They feel like “What about my friends I have developed in those communities?” And sometimes it is like a big breakup, but it’s like, at least I choose myself.
00:34:06
Chris Sandel: Yeah. So when did you first start to find genuinely good recovery content or get to the bottom of the real cause for what was going on here in terms of the restriction?
Elisa Oras: As I said, all throughout the years, I was always searching for what would help me and how to recover. But I guess I started to hear about intuitive eating or Google intuitive eating, and I remember I found one book. It was just a simple PDF book from one woman. Her name was Nina. Many people don’t know her. She has a YouTube channel, but she’s not active anymore, and I guess she has moved on with her life, which is great.
But I bought her book and read her book, and she described intuitive eating, letting go of all diets. I remember there was her menu, just as an example, like “This week I went out with my friends and I ate hamburgers and French fries”, for example. I was like, oh my God, don’t you know that those foods are so toxic for you and so unhealthy? It’s like, no, no, no, I can’t do it. This is not rational, this is not healthy. It’s not for me.
And then I continued to struggle with my bulimia, my eating disorder, another year. At that point I was so desperate to find an answer, and I had just done another 30 days on raw, and then I know what happens after the 30 days; I go through my usual “Oh my God, I can’t deal with this, I’m going to have a binge episode.” I had a big binge episode. Maybe it was many days in a row or something, binge and purge. I guess at that point, I was just so sick and tired. I was like, “I’m willing to do whatever it takes. I don’t care what I have to do or change, change my whole mentality. I want to recover more than anything. I can’t continue living like this.”
I guess I reached my rock bottom when I was just so open, finally, to new ideas. Not just my idea that the raw food would heal my eating disorder or something. And then I don’t remember exactly, but I stumbled upon a book again – her book – and I bought it again. I didn’t even know I had read it already. I started to read, I’m like, “Oh, I already read this book.” [laughs] I bought the same book again. But the difference was then that my mindset was so different, and I started to understand, of course when I’m still restricting what types of foods I can eat and being so stuck in my clean eating and the raw food and everything, of course this is still a restriction. I was finally open to the idea.
This is why I read her book and it resonated with me so differently this time. This is when I was finally – and I understood what she talked about. I didn’t know it, but somehow it made so much sense to me. It’s like, of course when you hold your breath, of course you’re going to be hyperventilating and you’re so out of breath or something. Or of course if you’re so sleep-deprived for years, you’re going to be so tired for a long time, and it made sense that restriction is exactly the same. It’s like, of course I’m binge eating because I’m restricting.
It finally clicked for me, and this is how my recovery started, or the commitment to “Okay, first thing, I have to stop all restriction.”
Chris Sandel: Were you then doing that on your own, or did you seek treatment, whether that be inpatient or outpatient? What happened as part of that?
Elisa Oras: I didn’t even know where to turn, inpatient or any of that. I also know that this can go badly, because like I said, Google is not so great always. But since I was already so invested in doing the raw thing and researching my own answers and finding what works for me and everything, I already had done it for so many years, the first thing I started to Google about this more – intuitive eating, how to recover and everything.
Then slowly, I remember I found the website – back then it was called Your Eatopia. Now it’s called Eating Disorder Institute. I’m not sure if she’s active there.
Chris Sandel: She’s not. It’s Gwyneth Olwyn’s website. She hasn’t put out something for I think a number of years now. But yes, Your Eatopia was what it was originally called.
Elisa Oras: That is the whole big community where – similar things about extreme hunger why you have extreme hunger, why it’s not binging, and also the importance of eating the ‘junk’ food and stopping all restriction and also about stopping exercise and resting. Those are the core things that I also teach now and I totally believe in. This is where I heard about it first.
But first, also, I started actually with intuitive eating. To back up a little bit, I didn’t find the Your Eatopia website on day 1. I started with intuitive eating. This is where, of course, I started to have the binges and I thought, “Oh my God, I’m going to stop restriction but I also have to stop the binges.” I didn’t know that’s the extreme hunger and a normal phase you’re going to go through if you come from restriction.
It was a period of maybe three months or something when I focused on the intuitive eating, but then I started to find another path of extreme hunger, allowing myself to eat to my full hunger and physical hunger and mental hunger.
And also, I understand for many people counting calories is not helpful, and you don’t have to count calories to recover, but for me it was helpful to see the recommendations, the 2,500 to 3,500, to see that oh my God, that’s actually recommended. It’s not a bad thing. So I was like, okay, I’m making sure that I’m eating at least those amounts, and when I got to those amounts for lunch or something, I stopped counting and I just ate more anyway. But it was helpful for me. I didn’t count for a long time, but just at first to see, yeah, I’m eating enough, so I must be on the right path.
00:40:50
For a while – thankfully, I stopped purging from day 1 of my recovery because I knew purging would just lead to the next binge episode. So luckily I was able to stop purging from day 1. It was such a significant part of why I was able to recover. But I substituted it with exercising. I didn’t know there is such thing as bulimia athletica or purging through exercise, and I kept on exercising. I thought, “Oh, exercising is healthy, and if I’m going to eat so many calories or eat whatever I want, at least I have to exercise.” Also, it’s so normalised to exercise and nobody sees it as a disordered behaviour. I didn’t know it as well.
But on the Your Eatopia or Eating Disorder Institute website, I finally learned that exercising can actually be another form of compensation, and exercising is a form of stress. If I have already been through so much stress, then the last thing my body needs right now is exercising. It doesn’t matter your mindset behind it. Some people, I don’t know, love to do some activities. But it’s just the stress of it by itself was not worth it. Plus, it was feeding into my bulimia mindset that I had to earn the food or burn it off later or something like that. So that was what I had to learn over time. Eating enough, stopping exercising.
Chris Sandel: Yeah. I want to just touch on something you said there around calorie counting. I don’t have any blanket statements on this or thoughts on this. It depends on how someone’s using it and the intention behind it and what it’s doing for someone. There are clients where I will use calorie counting because it’s actually needed and helpful as part of their recovery. I think where it typically differs is most people are calorie counting to make sure they’re not going over some certain amount, and typically when I’m doing it, it’s to make sure that someone is hitting some minimum amount and being above it.
So there’s a different intention behind it, the same way as I think weighing someone can be helpful depending on how it’s being used. Again, someone’s normally weighing themselves to make sure they’re not over a certain amount, whereas if I’m doing it because it seems like it will be a useful part of recovery, it’s because we know that the weight should be going on and we’re using it as a way of making sure that exactly is occurring.
I know there’s often blanket statements around ‘calorie counting is bad’, and I would typically say that most of the time I’m in agreement with that, but I do think context matters and how you’re using a tool or an implement is what then determines its true usefulness.
Elisa Oras: Yeah, totally. The intention behind it matters. Many people don’t have normal hunger cues, so it’s very hard to tell them just eat to their full hunger. They will eat to their full hunger and they end up undereating because their hunger cues are not normal. They get full very quickly. Plus, their eating disorder tells them “You shouldn’t eat more, it’s too much, you already ate too much.” But actually, no, you eat too little. You are overestimating what you’re eating.
Chris Sandel: Totally.
00:44:15
You mentioned about extreme hunger and this being something you experienced. Talk a little about what this was like for you, and how you really dealt with it.
Elisa Oras: Extreme hunger really feels like you are binging, the same way as I did in my bulimia. You just feel like you want to eat and eat and eat and you never seem to get full. It really freaked me out because with intuitive eating, they don’t talk about extreme hunger. They don’t say extreme hunger is something normal. You are supposed to eat when hungry, stop when full. You are supposed to try to stop eating in a number 6 on the hunger scale or something. But since it didn’t happen for me, I was freaked out and I thought something was wrong. So I still demonized my hunger. And even the problem that I still called my extreme hunger ‘binging’, like “I’m just binging.”
But I feel like it was so important for me to start to label it more correctly as extreme hunger, recovery hunger, feasting, because that was actually what was happening. And to make peace with my hunger, because I truly feel like I’m fully recovered because now I’m not afraid of my hunger. Of course since I’m not malnourished anymore, I’m not going to be binging or have extreme hunger, but generally I’m fully recovered from bulimia because I’m not scared of my hunger. I can eat as much as I want.
That was the big turning point in my recovery, when I understood, “Oh my God, this is just extreme hunger. This is not binging, and it’s going to pass” and understanding the mechanics behind it, why it happens and the starvation response and how your hunger hormones are affected if you undereat and everything.
And also the mental aspect of restriction. I also talk about it on my channel, mental restriction like labelling foods as good or bad or healthy, unhealthy. Maybe it doesn’t cause the binge eating that feels so out of control, but definitely it can keep up the overeating and everything, because essentially you are telling yourself that eating is not okay, “What I’m doing is not okay, I should not eat this much”, so therefore you feel restricted, and of course it can still keep up with the binges or the extreme hunger.
So I had to fully respond to my hunger. Of course, it wasn’t easy. It wasn’t like one day I learned about extreme hunger and it was so easy to let go, because of course I had so many of those thoughts and guilt. If you have learned about food – when you have been a raw foodist and totally believed in healthy eating, clean eating, it’s not so easy to erase all that information and how some foods are ‘toxic’ and sugar is bad for you and junk food is unhealthy and causes cancer and diseases. It’s so hard to undo all of that. So of course it held me back from fully responding to my hunger.
But I would say to people, yeah, it’s normal. It’s a process you’re going to go through, and getting rid of the guilt and the shame and the fear – I think it happened to me over time, as I saw that “Oh my God, I have a few moments in a day when I don’t think about food anymore.” To me, it was such a big deal because I used to think about food all day, 24/7. There was no hour in the day when I wasn’t thinking about food. So for me, that was a huge first sign I started to see.
I also started to see how maybe previously I binged on chocolate, and now I was like, actually, maybe I can eat half a bar of chocolate and I’m satisfied, and I don’t feel like eating the whole big bar of chocolate or something. And also seeing how sometimes for a meal, I could eat when hungry and stop when full and move on with my day.
These little things that started to happen convinced me that it was actually what I should do, respond to my full hunger. And then over time the extreme hunger wasn’t as extreme. For me, it came and it went. For some people it can be maybe for a few weeks or maybe it comes in later parts of their recovery. For me it was at first more intense and then over time it went away. But also, sometimes I had it more, sometimes less.
But also, even as a normal eater, sometimes you have more hunger, sometimes less. That is no longer considered extreme hunger, but just to say that even normal eaters sometimes feel like “I’m really, really full right now” and it’s not extreme hunger. It’s just called normal eating.
Chris Sandel: That is definitely one of the things I try and remind clients of as well. Even when they get to the place of recovery and they’re normal eaters, they will have days where they eat more or days where they eat less. They’ll have days where they’re really hungry. And sometimes they’ll be able to realise, “Yesterday I had that really busy work day” or there’s something that they can connect it to, and there’ll be other times where they’re like, “I have no idea, but today I’m just much, much hungrier.” And that is a normal part of being a human being.
00:49:48
There was something you said before that I want to come back to because I think it’s really helpful to talk about it. You said that there were all these messages that you had taken in or taken on board within the raw food movement, and that you wished you could erase them from your mind but you just couldn’t. In the early stages, was there a feeling that “These are thoughts I’m going to have to live with forever, this can’t be unlearned and I’ll just have to learn to have these thoughts around”? Or did you believe that “When I do this enough, when I eat these foods enough to respond to my hunger enough, a lot of what I’ve learned will start to erase and I will be able to see how either fallible or incorrect it was, or I won’t even have these thoughts to start with”?
Elisa Oras: I don’t remember thinking that “Oh my God, I will have these thoughts forever”, but it was just maybe thinking “When will it end?” or “When will it get better?” But I definitely had the belief that you can change anything you want. You can change your brain, you can change your mind, you can change your thoughts. Because already I had learned about your mind and your brain in the eating disorder or before the eating disorder. So I had the belief already that you can change your mind and your brain is neuroplastic and you can change your brain and everything.
Also, because of the people I have learned recovery from and how they were once having those thoughts and the eating disorder behaviours and everything and how they now believe and think differently. So I think I had the belief that it’s totally possible for me as well. But of course, at first I didn’t know how to do it or how long it takes.
For me, I think my positive side that really helped me to recover is I am so eager to learn and I am so eager to seek out information. I’m not the one who just sits there. I want to understand, why do I think this way? Why are certain things like this? What can I do to change it or make it better? What would somebody else do or say, or how did they go through this struggle and overcome it?
I guess the research online in those positive recovery-oriented communities really helped me to constantly rewire my brain with information. I was very eager to learn, and I almost saw this recovery process as an experiment. Not so much maybe about “it’s a struggle”, but I tried to reframe it as “I’m so interested in how I can change my behaviours and my mindset and overcome this eating disorder.” I guess this approach made it less personal and I didn’t take those thoughts so personally, but was the curious scientist, almost like “Oh, interesting. How can I change it or how can I work on changing something?” So that mindset was key to learning and changing my brain, I feel.
Chris Sandel: That’s awesome. It’s great that that naturally happened for you, because it is what I recommend with clients, that there is very much a “let’s get curious here.” There is no failure; there’s more just information and “let’s see what happens with this thing and that thing.” To remove so much of the emotion that is connected and be much more, as you say, curious or treating it as an experiment, I think can be really helpful when you can truly take that on board.
Elisa Oras: Yeah, you step out of the struggle and you’re able to see it more rationally.
00:53:52
Chris Sandel: You said the purging stopped and then you replaced it with exercise even though you didn’t realise you were replacing it with exercise. When you then did make that realisation, how was it for you stopping the exercise? Were you able to do the same as you did with the purging and just go cold turkey? Or what was it like?
Elisa Oras: For me, my number one goal was full recovery, and even before I started my full recovery, I told myself, “I am willing to do whatever it takes, as long as it takes” because my top priority was full recovery. I was willing to recover no matter what. No matter if my biggest fears manifested or the fear of weight gain, or “Am I going to be unhealthy?” or whatever. Everything I did before, all the restriction, it didn’t work. So I’m like, “I’m willing to try something different and completely let go of all restriction.”
But since with exercise, I didn’t know initially that it’s part of the restriction, part of purging, I kept on doing it because of that reason. But when I learned that exercise can hold you back from full recovery, it’s still a source of stress, you should be resting, I was really committed to the recovery process. I saw restriction as the enemy at that point. It wasn’t an easy breezy decision, but it was a very rational decision – almost like, “Why do I keep on purging and then expect my hunger cues to be normal?” To me, that was insanity. Even day 1 when I started recovery.
So when I learned about exercise, I’m like, “It would be crazy for me to keep on exercising if now I’m so aware that it can keep me from fully recovering.” So for me, it was a no-brainer. Like, of course keeping up the exercise is just not worth it for me. If my goal is full recovery – even if exercise has a 1% chance to affect my recovery negatively, to me it’s not worth it.
Some people feel like, “I’m not malnourished and I do have my period and it’s not that bad and I do eat” and everything, but if you have a little lingering thought that “Maybe it’s too much for my body right now” or “Maybe it really messes with my mind right now”, to me, it’s like, why risk it? Why risk keeping up this behaviour? So to me it was a very clear decision to stop exercising, and I did it.
Of course, back then I was already many months into my recovery, so that helped as well, but I really feel like after stopping exercising and completely resting, my symptoms improved. The bloating got better, and I think the hunger cues got even better – because of course, if you exercise you’re going to be more hungry, so it triggers extreme hunger, I feel, when your body has already gone through the restrict cycle and everything. At the end of the day, it was so helpful that I stopped completely.
Chris Sandel: I’ve heard that from other clients once they’ve actually stopped. The anticipation of doing that and feeling like “I could never stop, it’s going to be too much” is there to begin with, but once clients start to do that, it does help in terms of the symptoms. Which makes sense, because you’ve now got this extra energy that is being used for recovery as opposed to being used on exercise and the recovery from the exercise. So that’s definitely something I’ve noticed with clients as well.
And even if someone is able to say “I don’t think this is too much for me, I think I’m giving my body enough energy for why I can continue on with the exercise”, I’m a big one of like, okay, let’s develop your psychological flexibility. Let’s get to a stage where you are 100% the one in the driving seat and prove that that is the case by saying “Hey, I’m going to take some time off exercise.”
I’m not in recovery from an eating disorder, and I could very easily say “Cool, for the next month I’m not going to do anything.” There would probably be some level of challenge of like, I’m used to being outside more or whatever, but if I want to do that, I can do that because I’m the one that is in the driver’s seat. So it’s not even so much about “Is this healthy for me? Am I eating enough to actually repair and recover from the exercise?” It’s more about, are you truly in control in the way that you think you are with this thing, or is it using the idea of health masquerading for the true thing underneath, which is “I can’t stop and I can’t take the time off”?
Elisa Oras: Exactly. The mental component is so important as well. And now, as I’m fully recovered, I can go many months not exercising. For example, in summer I have other stuff to do and activities and everything and I’m not even thinking about it. You should be in control. You shouldn’t be driven by “I have to exercise.”
Chris Sandel: Which is so funny in the sense that for so many people, it is about the feeling of being in control, and yet when you dig down, actually they’re not in control. They are purely a hostage here and it is making choices at the request of the eating disorder. There’s nothing controlled about it. They are out of control, but it’s this illusion where they are tricked or feel like they’re in control when they’re really not.
Elisa Oras: Yeah. Otherwise you could easily stop restriction, you could stop exercise, if you truly would be in control, right?
Chris Sandel: Yeah.
01:00:00
Then the next part of your book is around the mental recovery piece. Talk about your mental recovery and what was part of this.
Elisa Oras: Mental recovery definitely is such a big area to talk about. But I feel like what really helped me with the mental recovery was what I had been through even before the eating disorder. Remember when I told you about the stress I went through, and I think I told you about the depression and everything. This is when I started to learn more about my mindset, and I remember I read a book about the power of your subconscious mind and how your thoughts affect your reality and how you feel and what you manifest and everything, and the importance of being your best friend and how you treat yourself and a little bit about self-compassion, and how your thoughts are not facts and don’t believe everything you think.
So that was important groundwork that I already had even before my eating disorder started. My eating disorder didn’t start necessarily because I hated myself or because I had maybe low self-esteem because of acne. It started with the physical behaviours and dieting and then starting to binge eat and everything. So the mental part that I had learned before was a good groundwork that I already had.
This is why I was able to encourage myself through recovery, to be my own coach, my own cheerleader. Of course it didn’t mean that I didn’t have any negative thoughts, I didn’t hate the body changes or the water retention and bloating or anything. But genuinely, I have never told myself like “You fat pig!” I have never spoken to myself like that because of what I had learned already before, and that helped me to get through my depression. This is what really helped me.
But I guess it was ongoing work with the self-compassion. I knew how I speak to myself affects how I feel, and how I feel then affects the behaviours, and then the behaviour is going to affect the results. So I knew if I wanted full recovery, I had to change the thoughts that are fuelling the behaviours. Because if I keep on criticising myself, if I keep following the eating disorder thoughts, automatically it’s going to affect my recovery. So I knew everything starts with your starts.
And even the eating disorder behaviours, why we start to restrict and diet in the first place comes with your thoughts, like “How is it going to affect my body if I eat those foods?” or “People won’t accept me if I gain weight” or stuff like that. So the mental part I feel like is really key to not just recover, but also sustain your recovery.
Otherwise, I believe if you just recover your behaviours, you just stop dieting and restricting, but you don’t stop those thoughts or beliefs that are fuelling those behaviours, it’s just a matter of time. You will go back to the old ways of restricting and dieting because that can be a way to cope or feel like you have a sense of control or feel like you can be good enough if you control your body and your weight and everything.
So I guess very basic things like working on my thoughts and beliefs and how I speak to myself. That would be the key things. Also, of course, learning about social media and how diet culture wants you to think that only certain body sizes are good or healthy or valuable or successful or accepted, and un-brainwashing myself from all this bad culture in terms of body image and what they promote. Understanding body diversity and focusing on seeing body diversity all around me, and also learning about how people can be healthy no matter their body size, and health is not a body size. Learning all about that I guess was also a very important aspect to un-brainwash from all this diet culture.
Chris Sandel: Was social media a big thing in your life? Had it been something that had been fuelling your disordered thoughts when you were really in the depths of it?
Elisa Oras: When I had the worst of my eating disorder, I guess it was 2011-12 or something. I don’t know when social media started, but I certainly wasn’t active on social media back then. It was more about the internet. I could see those websites and compare my body to other people’s bodies on websites and everything. And I guess TV and magazines and the general diet culture was definitely there, but I wasn’t back then so – on Instagram, luckily. That started a bit after. I don’t even remember when I joined my Instagram, but I feel like I was already fully recovered when I joined Instagram, for example. And on Facebook, I have never been so active on Facebook, so it wasn’t a big deal. But definitely on YouTube because you can search those videos and see the bodies with the tight clothes and everything. So that definitely affected me.
01:05:46
Chris Sandel: Was journalling a big part of this for you? I’m asking because I know for a lot of clients, the journalling piece can be really helpful with dealing with or understanding their thoughts or the thoughts that are naturally occurring, and getting into a regular journalling practice can be really helpful. Was that something that was useful for you?
Elisa Oras: Definitely. Journalling has been a big part of my life. I guess now like 20 years. But of course, I have used it in a disordered way as well, like to keep up with my current diets or whatever the ‘goal’ was and everything. But if I use my personal journal or something, I use it as a brain dump. Whenever I have something on my mind and I can’t talk to anybody or maybe nobody’s around or it’s just private thoughts or stress, then I can just use it as a brain dump. Just write down whatever I’m thinking about just to get it out of my system in some way. Some people maybe call a friend or talk to somebody, but it was so accessible because it was only dependent on me. Journal, just let go of the thoughts.
I really love mindset work and what we spoke about. I understand the thoughts and how the thoughts affect you and everything. In journalling, you can read what you wrote and then you can almost see it from an outside perspective after it’s put on paper and you can ask yourself, is this really true? Is this really helpful? Is this really the only way to think about this situation?
Because in reality, the situation sometimes is very hard. Let’s say you’re going through recovery, you hate it, you have so many uncomfortable symptoms. But you can see the situation either in a negative way or a positive way. You can say, “I hate my body, I feel gross, why me?” That is one way of seeing the situation and it leads to nowhere. Or you can see the situation, “My body’s recovering. My body’s healing. My body has been through so much. Even though I feel so uncomfortable right now, I do believe that my body deserves respect and kindness. What can I do for myself to feel a little bit better right now?”
The situation doesn’t have to change, but you have to learn to see the different stories you can tell yourself. The journalling can really help you to see, “What is the story I’m telling myself right now? Is it helpful? Is it rational? Would I speak like this to my best friend? And also, if I was 80 years old and wise and experienced and I would give advice to my current younger self, what advice would I give my younger self about this same situation?” sometimes I would channel that other part of me, like the wise advocate, some people say, or my intuition or whatever you want to call it. I would challenge it. To me it would be so interesting, what I would say. Again, I would see it as a scientific or an experiment.
This is also part of Follow the Intuition. Follow your intuition, follow your heart. Don’t follow the fears or what your thoughts say. Follow the intuition, and sometimes you really have to tap into the intuition, your higher self, what it is. Journalling can help you to connect with that, I feel.
Chris Sandel: Definitely. I think it helps to connect with that. It also helps, as you said there, to create some distance. When you then reread it, you can have a different perspective on it than when it’s just swirling around in your head. The amount of times that clients have sent me emails and then by the end of the email they’re like, “I can tell that everything I’ve just written is the eating disorder giving excuses for this and that this is just the eating disorder talking” – just the simple act of putting this in an email to send to me really starts to crystallize a lot of that for them.
And yes, they then still have the challenge of “Now I have to go and eat that thing” or “Now I have to not exercise” or whatever it may be, so that challenge is still there. But I think it pulls down the façade or the illusion about some of the things that are going on in their head, and they can see it a little bit more for what it really is.
Elisa Oras: Exactly. Because of that, I also offer even daily emails for my clients, because the recovery needs to happen every day, but it’s also like the eating disorder is there every day, so you have to reflect on your thoughts. Sometimes if you just let the thoughts spiral in your head, you can’t see it objectively, you can’t see it rationally. So writing it down in an email – sometimes my clients will tell me, “Yeah, I already know what you’re going to say” or “I already understand what I have to do” but it’s just helpful to write it out so you can see a little bit more clearly.
Also, if I respond to them from my healthy recovery voice, being a normal eater, they also learn a new way of seeing things and speaking to themselves and everything. It’s so helpful to see it in writing, somehow.
Chris Sandel: Yeah. Also, I think in the same vein, it can be difficult for someone to give themselves permission even when they know it is the right thing to do. And longer term, they want to get to a place where they can give themselves that permission, but sometimes they ask a question that they know the answer to just because they want me to be able to say, “Yes, that’s okay” or “Yes, that’s the right thing to do.” And I’m completely okay with that. If that’s the thing that allows someone to take that day off exercising or allows someone to have that ice cream after dinner or whatever, great.
As I said, eventually I want someone to give themselves permission, but we need to get to that place, and in the beginning I’m happy to be that person.
Elisa Oras: Yeah. Even when I recovered on my own, I had to seek the permission online, other people’s stories and what they said, read the books and see those other videos and everything, to have the same confirmation over and over again, to give myself permission to eat. Like, “Yeah, eat whatever you want” and “Diets and restriction doesn’t work” and everything. So in a way, even when I didn’t have a coach to help me recover, I did seek out – I was daily online.
Also, sometimes in recovery you come to a point where it’s no longer needed and it becomes also an obsession. So there is this balance, definitely. But of course I was daily online, and that kept me going. If I was just surrounded with my daily normal life and people who are not in recovery or hearing those diet culture messages, for sure I would relapse or go back to restriction.
So of course, you need reassurance, whether through a coach or through email or seeking online the recovery communities or whatever it is. It’s a natural part of the brain rewiring. It’s constant repetition over time.
Chris Sandel: Totally. You need to build up the resilience. And as part of that, you need to really create a bubble where you are reinforced a new message and have that happen again and again and again until you’re at a stage where you’re like, “I can have these thoughts on my own, and when the other thoughts that are unhelpful come up, I know within myself how to deal with that, or if someone at work makes a comment or whatever, I feel fine.”
But in the beginning, there is in some aspects some fragility with those kinds of things. So you’re wanting to create as much as possible this bubble of information that is reinforcing again and again and again that you are on the right path and that you’re making the right decisions to go against what is largely in opposition to what society is recommending.
Elisa Oras: Yeah. This is the nature of brain rewiring and rewiring the healthy thoughts. It’s constant repetition of the same message over and over again.
01:14:25
Chris Sandel: That in conjunction with eating more and doing less exercise and all of that. I think sometimes there can be this trap of trying to do all of the work in your head first “and then I’ll get on board with doing the eating part and doing the physical recovery”, and that just does not work. Confidence shows up after the fact. You’re going to feel anxious before you make some new change until you’ve made that new change.
So I definitely think doing some work on the mind and how you speak to yourself and all of this and being conscious about that is important, but if that’s not happening in conjunction with actually changing the energy debt that the body is in and changing the physical health that the body is in, you’re really pushing a boulder up a hill and you’re not going to get very far.
Elisa Oras: Yeah, this is actually so important and such a good point. You can’t just learn about recovery or perfectly prepare yourself for recovery. It’s in the action and starting to do it, and you learn the best as you go through it and have your own challenges and setbacks, and then you learn from it and see where you need to adjust or what you need to change. That’s so important.
Also because the fear doesn’t go away before. It’s like, “I want to feel comfortable with the food and I don’t want to have fear. Then I can start eating more, or then I can start challenging the foods.” But it actually happens the other way around. You first start to do those hard things. You have to face the fear, and then over time the anxiety and the fear will go away. It can’t happen the other way around.
Chris Sandel: Yeah, and the thing is most people either don’t understand that or kind of understand it but wish it’s another way and keep trying to find a way to make that so. I think as you talked about when you had the extreme hunger and then you ate and you stared to notice certain changes, I think as time goes on with recovery, this part gets easier because you start to have positive changes occur that are then adding to the other side of the balance sheet ledger so that you’re like, “Well, I know this has been difficult but my sleep is now better and I’m not getting the pian in my ankles the way I was before and my digestion has improved.” It reinforces those changes. But it’s always that early stage where it’s really challenging because it feels like “I’m not actually receiving much benefit, or any benefit, for these changes.”
Elisa Oras: That’s the hardest, the first few months being in recovery. But what I also talk about with my clients and I really recommend them to do is not just focus on the bad aspects of it or the challenges or whatever, but if you are the first few months into your recovery, what positive changes you have seen in your life, how it has affected your relationship or your physical health or mental health. Start to write down those things.
The other thing – I don’t know if you see it happening as well – is that as people recover and they get out of the first initial stages of being in starvation and recovery gets hard, and also they have more time between from the eating disorder, they start to have this selective amnesia about what it was really like. They don’t really remember how bad it was before. It’s very hard to maybe see the changes they have made in recovery and how bad it really was before, so how significant it actually is, those few little changes. Like “Now I can be more present in conversations.”
Just today I was speaking to a client, and she was like, “Oh my God, I ate my breakfast and I went and just read a book.” Such a normal thing we take for granted if somebody’s a normal eater, but for people with eating disorders, it’s such a big thing, being able to engage in your normal activity – even if just for 15 minutes or so. So don’t forget how bad it was, and start to notice those little positive changes, no matter how big or small.
01:18:59
Chris Sandel: I think that also, though, can be where a trap lies. There is this hyper-focus on how bad things were, and “if I compare where I am now to where things were before, things are so much better” – and that’s where people get stuck in quasi-recovery or half-recovery, because they’re comparing it to how things were at their worst and they’re still knocking up against the anxiety around “but I just don’t want to put on any more weight, I don’t want to have to reduce my exercise any more than this, I feel like I’ve already changed enough in terms of my eating or I’ve done enough.” You can get into this place of rationalising why stopping now is fine because things were so much worse before.
So many of the clients I work with are contacting me and I start working with them because they get into that place and then they live there for years and years. It’s only then as time goes on that there is the realisation of “I’m still in a prison cell; it’s just a slightly bigger prison cell. But I’m not as free as I may have imagined I was when I first started to make some of those changes.”
Elisa Oras: That’s also a very good point, how the eating disorder twists everything. Something that can be positive, we can take it as positive, but still twist it as something negative. For example, “I got my period back” and it’s something to celebrate, it’s a positive sign from our body, but then the eating disorder uses this against them, almost like “Yeah, now you don’t deserve to eat” or “You don’t need to gain more weight.” So yeah, really seeing that thoughts are not true, even though you may think this way.
The marker of full recovery is your mental state. It’s not about gaining weight to a certain number or eating a certain number of calories every day, but it’s like, are you free? Until this is not happening, you have to continue recovery, and you deserve to recover.
Chris Sandel: You mentioned the period there. I think that’s one that people really get stuck on. Often what I’ve found with clients is that it feels like “If I’ve got my period back, that is the last thing that would ever come online as part of recovery, so if I’ve got my period back, it’s an indication that my body has got everything it needs, so I can now shut up shop with recovery.”
I’m regularly saying to clients, just because you’ve got your period back, does not necessarily mean that recovery is complete. As you say, it’s the mental side of things and how someone is there – but also, for lots of people, they’ll get their period back much earlier, and there’s still lots of other symptoms that haven’t repaired completely. There’s still lots of recovery to be done. So I’m always really trying to help clients see that just because you’ve got your period back is not an indication that everything is now repaired.
Elisa Oras: Yeah. I personally never lost my period. I was never underweight. I didn’t lose a significant amount of weight when I had my bulimia and everything, and I still had an eating disorder. I still had the physical and mental symptoms of an eating disorder. So I didn’t lose my period, but I needed to recover. I needed to eat to my full hunger. I needed to let my body do its own thing in regard to the weight gain and everything. So the period is just one aspect of recovery; it’s something to celebrate, it’s a good indicator of you’re moving in the right direction, but at the same time, there’s so much other stuff going on with your body, and also with your mind, when it comes to full recovery.
01:23:04
Chris Sandel: You mentioned earlier that Google and online and forums and that kind of thing were the thing that helped you in your recovery, and then watching YouTube videos and all of that online support. Did you have any support in real life? Were there other people in real life in recovery that you would meet up with, or did you have a partner that was supporting you through this?
Elisa Oras: I didn’t have anybody in real life who was actually helping me to recover or who I could talk about recovery or they would understand it. But definitely my boyfriend, now husband – I guess I shared with him what I was going through as much as I felt comfortable with. Maybe in some aspects I wasn’t ready to share everything. I feel like he learned about my recovery and exactly what I went through when he finally read my book. [laughs] Because I didn’t share all the details.
But whenever I struggled or I needed to talk about something, he was listening and he was supporting. He really didn’t care about me having to eat a lot of food or maybe gaining weight or my body changes. So that was never an issue and it was really helpful that I felt this unconditional support and love.
And I guess it was also my decision to recover on my own and to rather seek help from online because I didn’t know where else to turn in my real life. In Estonia, we really have limited sources. I haven’t searched it, but I can say that I don’t think our eating disorder recovery treatments – there is not much great help here. We are not so advanced here. So I didn’t even think of this as an option.
With my closest friends, I think I shared my eating disorder background, and also going through recovery, and slowly what I was learning about why diets don’t work and everything. But since I also know that it’s very hard to try to convince people, I guess I would only share about it when I felt like people were asking or interested or open to the idea. I was never the one to preach recovery and “What are you doing? Don’t talk about dieting!” and everything. Also, I tried to separate myself when anybody would mention diets or weight loss. But yeah, with my closest friends I would point out, “Why are you talking about somebody’s body like this? How is that helpful?”
But I guess I got most of my support from online and the communities and the videos.
01:26:06
Chris Sandel: What was your transition like, then, from during recovery, becoming recovered, and then thinking, “Hey, I want to do this as a job and be a recovery coach”? What did that look like?
Elisa Oras: I never thought in my life that I would be a recovery coach. I have actually studied to be an interior architect or interior designer with my university and everything, so that was what I thought I would do. I’m really interested in art. But since I had my eating disorder, this personal experience, and since I recovered thanks to the resources online, and through my raw food interest and everything, I was also blogging with raw food – and also I guess back then, I already did some videos, but an Estonia channel.
So it was just so natural for me to start to blog about the eating disorder recovery and stuff I learned about bloating and digestion issues and mindset stuff and everything. I was thinking about starting a YouTube channel. It was a very daunting thing, but after maybe half a year or something, I finally did my first YouTube video, and I started to share content online. At first I was so happy when I had one person commenting on my video or I got one message. [laughs] I was like, “Oh my God!” It was so weird for me.
But I started to blog and do videos about this, and I guess this is how people started to ask me questions, and I was very responsive through email. Of course, right now I can’t respond to individual questions by email because I have my clients, and this is why I do the free YouTube videos and I have my book and everything. But back then, I would have such long conversations with people, whoever would contact me, and I would answer their questions and write paragraphs with them. And then people started to ask me, “Do you also offer coaching?” or “Can I work with you one on one?”
I guess this is how it started, just because people started to ask me, and just giving them my experience and what I had learned. And then I guess somehow I became a recovery coach.
Chris Sandel: Nice. I see on your website you’ve subsequently done other training in NLP and life coaching. That has then subsequently helped you to be a better coach, I imagine.
Elisa Oras: Yeah, to have more education about coaching and the process and everything. But I also try to be very clear that I’m not a doctor, I’m not a dietitian, I’m not a therapist. I guess I’m a recovery supporter/mentor. People should have their own medical support and their recovery teams and everything that is necessary, but people do find it helpful to speak to somebody who has gone through an eating disorder. Not just read about it or learned about it, but actually gone through it, so they can resonate and they feel that I understand what they’re going through and everything. I guess that is my plus as a coach.
Chris Sandel: You said there’s not much on offer in Estonia, so how much of your client base is from Estonia? Is it there, or is it other places around the world?
Elisa Oras: Actually, I have had only a few clients from Estonia because of course in Estonia, we have Estonian language, and many people are not so confident in speaking English, or maybe they don’t search so much English. I don’t know. I speak English even when I think sometimes. [laughs] This is why it seems so natural for me, like oh yeah, everybody can understand it. But actually, many people maybe are not so fluent in English, so I guess this is why my content is not so accessible to people who are in Estonia.
Most of my clients are all over the world. I really wanted to not limit my clients or my message to Estonia, because we are only like 1.5 million people here. It’s a very small pool of people. But I know the power of online messages or online resources, and this is how I was able to recover, so I really didn’t want to limit myself to only Estonia-based content or Estonian videos or something like that. This is why I don’t have many clients from Estonia.
Chris Sandel: Is there anything else we haven’t gone through that you want to chat about?
Elisa Oras: I don’t know, I think we’ve covered quite a lot. If you have anything else, you can ask me, but otherwise I’m not sure what else.
Chris Sandel: Elisa, this has been a wonderful conversation, and it’s been so nice hearing about your story and what your recovery journey has looked like and now getting into recovery coaching, and that you’ve been doing that for such a long time. I know, as I said at the top, that many of my clients have found you and have found your content really helpful.
If people are wanting to find out more about you, where should they be going?
Elisa Oras: You can find me online from my website, for example, Follow the Intuition. And also YouTube, the same thing, Follow the Intuition, and also Instagram, @followtheintuition. This is where you can find me.
Chris Sandel: Perfect. I will put all of those links in the show notes. Thank you so much for coming on the show. This has been great.
Elisa Oras: Yeah, thank you so much. I really had a great time. Thanks for having me.
Chris Sandel: So that was my conversation with Elisa Oras. Hearing her talk about her eating disorder and her recovery journey, it reminded me of many clients and client stories and client experiences. Elisa really is a testament to recovery and the turnaround someone can make with their relationship with food and the relationship with their body.
01:32:23
I said at the start that I had two recommendations to make. The first is a film, and it’s called Another Round. It’s a Danish film that came out in 2020, and it won lots of awards, including an Academy Award for Best International Foreign Film. A friend had mentioned it to me around Christmastime, but I only recently got a chance to watch it.
It’s a dark comedy about four friends who are teachers who find out about this theory that humans do better at an alcohol level of 0.05 or above, so they decide to test it out. They start drinking and trying to keep themselves constantly above the 0.05 level. There’s just a lovely tone to the film where it’s funny, but it’s also dark, it’s heartwarming and heartbreaking. It just seemed to have this real mix of things, but where they sat well together.
I was thinking about that being a Danish film really helped this. If this had been an American film, I think it would’ve been much more over-the-top. And it’s not like there aren’t over-the-top moments, but I think the whole film would’ve been like that. I felt like if this was an American film, it would’ve been much more like Old School or The Hangover or that kind of thing. But this was much more layered and sentimental in a really lovely way.
I never watch horror films, but I love the Swedish film Let the Right One In, and I know there was an American remake of that but I never watched it. But Let the Right One In, while being a completely different subject matter, has some similarities in terms of its beauty and its tenderness. I can see why Another Round won a load of awards because it really is a fantastic film. So I highly recommend checking it out. It’s one of the best films I’ve seen in a while.
The second recommendation is a documentary called Art and Craft. It’s about Mark Landis, who is one of the most prolific art forgers in history. He’ll copy a piece of art and then contact a gallery and say that he wants to donate the art to the gallery, and then he’ll make up a story that his mother or his sister passed away and he was left this in the will and he wants to donate it to them. Over a period of 30 or 40 years, all of these fake works have started to end up in galleries all over the US.
But what was most interesting for me about this documentary was Landis himself. He’s not the kind of person your mind conjures up as an art forger and then having the bravado to walk into these galleries and lie to them. He’s someone who’s just really isolated and lonely and has had lots of mental health issues. He talks about how these 10 minutes or 30 minutes with someone at the gallery are the times where people treat him nicely. You see for all his skill as an artist, he just wants what we all want, which is to be loved and to be connected with other human beings.
I remember watching another documentary all about art forgery called Beltracchi: The Art Forgery – I don’t know exactly how to pronounce his name. This was a guy who was living the high life. He had sold works of art for millions of millions. I think for the art that he was sentenced to six years in prison for selling, these had sold for nearly £30 million, and there was lots, lots more that they hadn’t found. Estimates are that he made north of £50 million, and he had the most insanely gorgeous houses. Money was a big part of his motivation for doing it.
But in Landis’s case, he never made any money from it. He’d spent money travelling all over the US trying to give these things to art galleries. Every bit of art that he ever made, he donated. Anyway, I just found it a really fascinating documentary that had a lot to say about the human condition. It’s called Art and Craft.
So that is it for this week’s episode. As I mentioned at the top, I’m currently taking on new clients. If you want help with an eating disorder or disordered eating, chronic dieting, poor body image, exercise compulsion, getting your period back, or any of the topics that I cover on this show, then please reach out. You can head over to www.seven-health.com/help for more information.
I will be back next week with another episode. Take care, and I’ll catch you then.
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