Episode 250: This week Real Health Radio is celebrating its 250th episode! The show is an ASK Me Anything (AMA) episode, where I answer your questions.
Today’s episode is number 250, which is barely comprehendible to me. It feels like a lifetime ago that I started this show back in August 2015, so we’re approaching 7 years. A lot has changed over that time, both in my personal life and many of my views. But still, after all this time, I genuinely love doing the show and we are celebrating today by doing an Ask Me Anything (AMA) episode.
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Chris Sandel: Welcome to Episode 250 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/250.
Before we get started, I just want to mention that I’m taking on clients at the moment. I specialise in helping clients overcome eating disorders and 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 in any of these areas or you simply want to improve your relationship with food and body and exercise, then please get in contact. You can head over 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 eating disorders and disordered eating, or really just helping anyone who has a messy relationship with food and body and exercise.
Today’s episode is number 250, which is barely comprehensible to me. It feels like a lifetime ago that I started this show. It was back in August 2015, so we’re approaching seven years. A lot has changed over that time, both in my personal life and also in many of my views. But still, after all this time, I do genuinely love doing this show.
So today on the show, it is an Ask Me Anything episode. I sent out an email asking for questions that people wanted to have answers to, and I got quite a few responses back. I’m just going to do them in the order that I received them, so let’s get started.
00:01:59
This first question has a specific wight or number in here that I’m going to blank out. It says, “Hey Chris. I’ve been in recovery for almost three years. I gained X amount of pounds” – just say it’s a large amount of pounds – “and the excess weight or overshoot is very slowly coming off. Why does it take so long for the body to return to a normal weight and to lose overshoot? This is the most difficult part of recovery. Thank you.”
What I would say to this is while we as a society prioritise weight loss and the thin ideal and all of these things, this is not the priority of your body. From an evolutionary perspective, if the body has just been through a famine, especially a famine that has lasted maybe years or decades, its priority is survival. And its priority is always survival, but if it’s just gone through that as an experience, it has an impact on how it thinks is the best way to survive. It doesn’t know when the next famine is about to start, so it’s very smart in being cautious, and the extra weight is an insurance in case the next famine starts tomorrow or is just around the corner.
So we have to think about these things from a body perspective. Your body is trying to help you survive, and it doesn’t know or understand the diet culture and the messages that you and we have all grown up in. It just knows that from an evolutionary perspective, keeping on weight is a very good thing to do.
Another way I often talk about this with clients is if we were to personify your body and make your body another person and think about that relationship, the body as a person has endured years or maybe even decades of restriction and overexercising and ignoring and second-guessing and accusing and belittling and probably lots of other ways that it has had not pleasant experiences. In a sense, trust has been damaged, and often severely so. So it takes time to win back this trust.
And not just time, but time where you are actively treating the body kindly and demonstrating that it can trust you. For example, if someone had been forced to do all of these things against their will, how trusting do you think they would be? And what would need to happen for that trust to be rebuilt?
I do believe that trust can come back, but I think we often underestimate what this takes and are still seeing things through our eyes of like “I want this thing to change, I want my body to look this way, I want this weight to come off” without actually thinking about it through the eyes of what does your body want and how does your body need to be shown trust again?
I would also add that not all bodies are designed to be a ‘normal’ weight because what we have designated a normal weight is incredibly subjective and biased. I truly believe that when the body is supported, it will find the weight that is right for it, and sometimes this will be in the supposedly normal range and sometimes it won’t. Really, the main part of recovery isn’t about weight returning to some amount that you dictate that is appropriate; it’s getting to a point that you are supporting your body and living in a way where the amount of weight that the body holds is not having an impact on the kinds of choices that you make – that weight isn’t the ultimate determiner of how a life is being lived.
This is all to say why I think it can take a long time for that to come off, and sometimes that does happen and sometimes it doesn’t happen. But I think it makes complete sense from an evolutionary perspective why this would take a long time.
00:06:12
The next question I’m going to paraphrase. It says, “Hi Chris. I was the classic underweight, overexercising anxious case with amenorrhea and a disordered view of my body and food. I’m lucky now to be a normal weight with a nine-month-old daughter and vastly improved relationship with food, exercise, and my body. I still relate to many of the quasi-recovery factors and hope to uncover these hurdles. I would love advice focusing on managing the constant thinking of food and perhaps coping strategies.
“Personally, whilst I now live a normal life not totally revolving around food/exercise and eat a wide range of foods, the battle and anxiety around what to eat and when (e.g., if I haven’t had any vegetables at every meal or can’t have exactly what I’ve planned), it’s still consuming. I spend a huge amount of time thinking and planning what I will eat and when and ensuring it is balanced, and when a meal cannot be exactly as I plan, I find myself still experiencing anxious thoughts and ruminating over what I ate and what I could/should have, etc. The ability to eat a meal that is not planned and move on with my day is still a struggle. The amount of brain space taken up by food can be exhausting. Thanks again for everything.”
Based on your comments, I would say there is still both physical and mental restriction going on. You are still judging your meals and your eating. There’s still lots of rules around things in terms of there needs to be vegetables with meals or when is the right time to eat a meal.
I would also add that just because you’ve got your period, doesn’t mean that full recovery has occurred, and I think this is often a very common misconception – that when the period returns, that’s an indicator that recovery has taken place, and that is definitely not the case.
I would also add that pregnancy is a huge ask on your body. I don’t know how long after you got your period back did you then become pregnant, but pregnancy is a huge ask on the body. And this is true for someone who isn’t in recovery; it’s a huge energy endeavour and needs a lot more energy than normal living, and this also then carries on after birth, especially with breastfeeding.
Given your comments about how much food and these kinds of things are still on your mind, I would say that your physical body, including your brain, still has further healing that needs to occur. And this will typically mean that further weight gain needs to occur for that to happen.
In a sense, the way to get over your issues is to take action to actually challenge these beliefs and rules and do the opposite. I’m a firm believer that eating disorders are very much like an anxiety disorder. This is something I chatted about in my conversation with Sasha Gorrell, so I will link to that in the show notes. With anxiety disorders, the way to deal with it is through exposure and doing the thing that scares you and doing it enough that your body and your mind get to a stage that it no longer fears doing that thing.
It’s very much the nervous system has been hijacked so that it feels a threat connected to this thing, and that threat is not necessarily conscious. I think we try to then explain why we’re having this feeling and make sense of this, and “Okay, this is a really big meal” or “I’m eating earlier” or whatever it may be, but the reason that you’re coming up with that as an explanation is because your body and your nervous system has already taken you to that place.
The way to overcome this, as I said, is by doing exposure, by repeatedly taking action. It would be doing this for many days or weeks or months or however long it takes for those changes to occur. Typically with clients, I will say that somewhere between doing something 5 to 10 times is where a lot of the changes will take place. So it would be intentionally have meals without vegetables. Intentionally have meals that are early. Think of foods that you fear or you think are off-limits and include them repeatedly. And continue to do this. This is the way that you are able to further recover.
And as I said earlier, I think there is more physical repair that needs to take place, so it’s that alongside taking in more energy generally. But that is how I would think about moving past the place that you’re currently at.
00:11:06
The next question is, “Chris, what change would you like to see with regard to the messages – and these can be in the media, within health, within the fitness industry – that lead people to falling into eating disorders or, once they’re there, feeling like they can’t stop the behaviour because that would be wrong?”
There’s lots of things that I think could be changed here. I think we really need to move away from the myopic focus on weight and really embrace body diversity, not thinking that weight is the ultimate determiner of someone’s health – because it definitely is not. I think having more of a non-diet approach when teaching people and talking about health. I’m a big advocate of that and a big advocate of things like intuitive eating. I do think that should be at the core.
I think there needs to be much more education about eating disorders, and I think this needs to be happening at all levels, whether we’re talking about it at the population level, whether we’re talking about that with therapists, whether we’re talking about that with doctors. I think eating disorders are very poorly understood, and what most people know or think they know is very stereotypical. It often includes a lot of their own biases and their own insecurities about weight and food and all of those things. So I think there needs to be a lot more education that goes on around this.
I think I’ve talked about the statistic before for children, that the number of kids who are getting type 2 diabetes versus the number of kids who are having eating disorders is like 250:1. Eating disorders are happening 250 more times than someone getting type 2 diabetes, and yet you just wouldn’t know that with all the messaging and the fearmongering around the kinds of foods people are eating and the focus on the so-called obesity epidemic. So I do think we really need to have a look at the way we’re talking about these things and educating it.
I think we need to talk about health in much broader terms – not just connected to food and exercise, because I think that’s the only things that are talked about; we need to move away from the moralising connected to health. No-one owes anyone their health, and the way we talk about someone if they’re in poor health like that’s something that they’ve done to themselves, and if someone is in good health, that’s something they’ve really taken care of, and this very moral way that we speak about this – I think we need to move away from that.
We need to stop talking about health as being a specific look, because that’s definitely not true. We need to give people a true understanding of the statistics around successful long-term weight loss, because it’s not true informed consent at this point. People are under the misconception about how helpful that is, how realistic that is, and the statistics are very different to what most people think about this.
I think we need to explore better the personal responsibility versus the social determinants of health, because it’s not that people can’t have any impact on their health through making different choices, but social determinants of health have a huge impact, and much more of an impact than anyone is giving any kind of recognition to. I think that this is the kind of thing that we need to explore more and take a lot of the responsibility out of people’s hands, because I don’t think it’s fair in a lot of ways that we’re putting all of this on people when there are much more constraints on people than we like to think.
I did a whole episode on this all about the complexity of health, and you can have people who are living literally a mile down the road or basically in the same area, and depending on their socioeconomic status, they’re living 20 or 30 years’ difference. So I think we need to really start to talk about those things more honestly and move away from the blame that is currently in place.
Those would be some of the things that come to mind.
00:15:53
The next question is “I have a question about how to handle health challenges when recovering from an eating disorder. I’ve been recovering for a few years and consider myself mostly recovered. I’ve developed quite a few health challenges and I’m finding it hard not to be triggered by them. I have no gallbladder and gained a significant amount of weight after its removal. I am unable to exercise because of chronic fatigue. My thyroid is borderline bad, so my doctor prescribed medication for it. I am prediabetic, was prescribed metformin, and also have high cholesterol and high blood pressure, which I take medication for.
“I’ve been told to eat a low-fat diet for the gallbladder problem, a low-carb diet for the blood sugar problem, and the diabetes educator I saw suggested a low-calorie and low-carb diet, which I immediately knew wasn’t right. Throw menopause into the mix and I’m just at a loss as to what to do. I would like to know if there’s anything I can do to care for myself and my body without unneeded medication and dieting after trying so hard to recover from my eating disorder, calorie restriction, and orthorexia. Thanks so much for your time.”
I’m so sorry that you’re going through all of this. That is a lot to be dealing with. One of the things I would say is, we don’t have ultimate control over our health. I think it can often be seen that there are things that are happening, and because of some moral failing, because of poor choices or lack of willpower, this is why someone is in that situation. This self-judgment or self-blame if it’s coming from the individual, or if it’s coming from the outside sources, just makes things worse. So the first thing I would say is just having real compassion with yourself in this moment is really, really important.
Given everything that you have going on, I would say it’s really important figuring out what works best for you and really learning to use interoceptive awareness so that you can be your best guide and can help to figure this out. Because there can be a difference between you eating less fat, for example, because a diet book told you to do this or a doctor told you to do this, versus you discovered that actually that genuinely works better for you; when you’re eating lower fat, you aren’t experiencing the nausea you were experiencing before because of the lack of gallbladder. And I’m not saying this is what you need to do; I’m just using it as an example that really, figuring these things out for yourself is really important.
And this doesn’t mean you have to do it on your own. You can work with a practitioner to help you with this, because they can then give suggestions of “Let’s try this” or “Have you thought of trying this or have you thought of trying that?” or “I’m noticing these things with what you’re eating and maybe think this could be something to help you.” Always offering them as suggestions of things to try and experiment with, where you’re not following a diet per se, but you’re trying things out to figure out what works well for you.
I think that finding someone you can work with who can do that with you in a collaborative way so that you also have autonomy with the things you’re trying – because I know if you’ve come from this place of a lot of restriction, of following diets, of being told different things to do, what is really important is that you can help to figure this out for yourself with someone’s assistance. But I think that’s a really important part of this.
I would also say looking at things outside of food and movement and the very obvious things that we think about when it comes to health, because these aren’t the only things that can be having an impact here. There’s a really great study called The Harvard Study that’s been going on for like 70 years or 80 years, something along those lines, and one of the things they’ve discovered through that is that the number one predictor of someone’s health is the quality of their relationships. Do they have healthy relationships? That is way more important than their blood sugar numbers, their cholesterol numbers, etc. So healthy relationships can be something that can be really important.
Things like trauma or adverse childhood experiences have a really huge connection on health. So is there work that can be done on trauma? Is this part of your picture?
I’m just using these two things as an example to say that there are lots of things outside of the very myopic, obvious stuff that gets talked about in regard to health that I think is definitely worth exploring. So those would be some of the things I would say, and I really do wish you all the best with this.
00:20:51
The next one is, “Hey Chris, I want to ask you a question. Why do you think people become so overweight that their body is in the way of living a normal life? For example, not being able to tie their shoes or walk properly. Do you think dieting is a major factor here?”
To start with, I want to just say that many people who are living in thin bodies or bodies where weight isn’t impacting on mobility or physically getting in the way can be in a situation where they aren’t able to tie their shoelaces or unable to walk properly. So I just want to say that it’s not just someone who is in a larger body where this can be an issue; it can happen all across the weight spectrum.
I would also add that there are many people who are living in large bodies, very large bodies, who are also incredibly flexible, incredibly agile, have lots of ability to move their body. I’ve had Amber Karnes on the podcast before; she does yoga, and she can do way more in yoga than I will ever be able to do, or at least at this stage that I’m able to do, and she is living in a much larger body than I am. I think she’s a very good example that just because you’re living in a large body, doesn’t mean that you are going to be inflexible.
There’s a great video – I will link to it in the show notes – of a guy on YouTube who is running around doing parkour, which is like jumping off buildings and jumping down stairs and running up a wall and doing somersaults, and he is incredible in what he’s able to do, and he’s in a large body. If you looked at him, you would probably make assumptions, and then you see him able to do these things and it’s absolutely incredible. So I think there are these assumptions that just because of a body being a certain way, there are limitations, and I don’t believe that that is true.
I do feel that movement can have an impact on someone. If someone is not doing movement and keeps that up for a long time, that can then have an impact, and again, this can happen all across the weight spectrum; it doesn’t have to be just someone who is in a larger body. But I’m also aware that if you are in a larger body, you are much more likely to receive ridicule or shame when they go for a run or go to the gym. So being in that size body can actually be a deterrent to doing these activities, and then it makes this more likely.
I would say that if we lived in a society where that wasn’t the case, where irrespective of someone’s body, they were able to go and move and no-one was going to say anything to them, then I think it would have a different impact.
But I also just don’t want to fall into the trap here of taking something that is incredibly complex in terms of weight and weight gain and giving a very simple answer. That simple answer could be about lack of movement or it could be a simple answer in terms of what you’ve asked, in terms of is dieting a major factor? Yes, I think dieting is a factor, but it is a hugely complex issue. I think too often, we want to give simple answers when there really isn’t a simple answer.
There is an incredible infographic that I’ve linked to before; I did a whole podcast called ‘The Complexity of Health’, and I’ll link to that in the show notes. There was an infographic that was done, and I don’t like the title of the infographic – it’s about obesity – but as part of it, it basically shows all of the different factors that can be connected to someone’s weight, whether someone puts on weight, whether someone doesn’t put on weight. And I think there’s probably other factors outside of what they list. It’s this whole interconnected web where there’s well over 100 different things. So I think that would be useful to have a look into. As I said, I’ll link to it in the show notes.
It has lots of different things connected to it, whether we’re talking about genetics, whether we’re talking about social determinants of health, whether we’re talking about someone’s upbringing. There’s so many factors that come into this. So I think dieting and diet culture has a big part to play in this, but I also don’t think it is the only thing.
00:25:43
The next question is, “Hey Chris, I’d like to know who you’ve helped to make the biggest recovery (i.e., is there someone who didn’t think they could recover but did, and how long it took them to see a change).” And then there’s a second question, which is “Also, who is your biggest motivation outside of family?”
I would say that most if not all clients with an eating disorder fall into the category of not thinking they will recover. I think it’s this real misconception that when someone starts recovery, it’s because they feel confident and motivated and have this belief in themselves. But mostly, it is ambivalence, with moments of feeling positive or moments of feeling like things can get better, and many moments of not feeling this way. So I just want to say this because I think this can often be a trap with people starting recovery. It’s like, “I’m going to wait till I feel really confident” or “I’m going to wait until I hit my so-called rock bottom.” Invariably, this doesn’t happen.
If I’m thinking about the biggest recovery, this is a really tough one to answer. I don’t really have one client who sticks out and I could answer this for, because I think about this in lots of different ways. The biggest recovery could be working with someone who is in their early twenties and helping them to recover, and they then still have their whole life ahead of them, so it’s been a really big recovery because we’ve intervened really early.
But equally, helping someone in their fifties who has been struggling for decades and is now finally getting out of an eating disorder – that’s huge. They’ve been able to overcome something that, for decades, they didn’t think they would be able to overcome. I’ve helped people in both of these categories and everything in between.
I know this is kind of a non-answer, as I haven’t given a specific individual, but really honestly, recovery is such a challenge that it feels like a victory with every person that I help. So there isn’t one person that stands out.
00:28:10
In terms of my biggest motivation outside of my family, the word ‘motivation’ here, I’m struggling with a little bit. If it’s someone who inspires me, probably the person who comes to mind is Gabor Maté. I think I’ve referenced him in the last podcast when I was talking about trauma. I’ve read I think all of his books; I’ve seen him do lots of talks, I’ve listened to him on lots of podcasts. I think he’s doing incredible work and is an incredible human being and just helping so many people connected to trauma, connected to parenting, connected to so many different things. So he is the person who comes to mind in terms of being motivational or inspirational.
00:29:02
The next question: “Hey Chris, I’d like to know, for those who you work with who might be considered chronic eating disorders, do you notice many themes or patterns in their ways of thinking or experiences? I know it’s tricky to generalise. Perhaps you can just share any observations. How much do you think genetics are at play with people’s likelihood of becoming chronic versus things like length of time being non-weight restored or personality traits or psychology, etc.? Again, another impossible to answer question, but maybe just some thoughts.”
Then the second part is “Also wondering if working with people with eating disorders has influenced the way you approach food and exercise yourself, or perhaps your approach toward food and exercise as a parent. So many people who work with those with eating disorders have personal experiences that influence, and I would say sometimes compromise, their work. So I’m curious if the experience of working with people has had any negative or helpful effects on you.”
The first part of this – genetics is not something I would say I’m an expert on by any stretch, and especially genetics connected to eating disorders. I’ve listened to certain podcasts on this and done some reading on it, and I’m actually trying to get a guest to come on the show about it. I’ve approached a number of people to try and get them on the show, so hopefully this is on the cards and will happen at some point.
But given what I know about genetics more generally – and let me use something like height as an example – there isn’t just one gene for height. There are many different genes for height, and depending on how many of those genes you have for height and the variant that you have with those genes for height will impact on your tendency or your chances of actually being taller. But that’s only if other factors are also at play, like there is enough food. For example, you could have an island of people who have all the genetic to be 6’5”, but there’s not much food available, so none of them make it past 5’5”. So I think yes, there is genetics, but there’s also these other factors at play as well.
I think the same way about eating disorders. There are genetics and there’s going to be many different variables and things connected to someone’s likelihood of developing an eating disorder, and then when someone enters into a state, i.e. they enter into a low-energy state, the genetics are then more likely to be turned on. The genetics can be more likely to be more difficult to turn off depending on how many variants someone has as part of that genetics.
I would also say there’s not an eating disorder gene or eating disorder genes. A lot of it is connected more to either personality traits, whether we’re talking about someone’s predisposition towards anxiety. It can also be connected to someone’s predisposition towards movement. So depending on the environment someone’s in, those genes can play out very differently. But in a very simple way of answering your question, it wouldn’t surprise me if when someone has developed an eating disorder, depending on their genetic traits could predispose to how easy or more difficult it is for someone to recover.
But also, I just want to add eating disorders are so complex. While genetics matter, there are so many other factors. Just off the top of my head, some of the other factors that can have an impact on the severity of someone’s eating disorder, trauma is often a big one. Parents’ impact on child’s belief about weight and about worth and having an impact on how they see their world and self-esteem. The length of time someone’s had an eating disorder clearly has an impact. Other traits in terms of, does someone have ADD or ADHD? Does someone have autism? There are some of the things I’m starting to explore a lot more with clients because I think this has much more of an impact, and especially with autism, I don’t think it’s being talked about enough, and I’m finding this is a very common thing. In terms of anxiety and OCD and those kinds of traits, I think that can be connected to genetics, but it also can be connected to all of the other things I’ve already talked about.
I think the quality of care that someone gets early on in their treatment can have a really big impact. If someone gets poor quality of care, that can actually do a huge amount of damage to someone.
The kind of social support that someone has and how much their life gets derailed from their eating disorder. And this isn’t always true; there can be someone who is stuck in a chronic eating disorder for many decades and they have lots of support and they have a partner and they have a child and they have lots of different things going on, they have a job, etc., but I would also add that a lot of the time it can become much more difficult when life has fallen by the wayside and someone isn’t working, they don’t have much social support, they don’t have much friends, they don’t have much interaction, and the eating disorder in a sense really becomes the only thing that they have in their life. So I think that can be another factor.
I think age of onset can also be a factor here as well, especially if it develops very early on in childhood or in adolescence and then goes on for a really long time. There is so much development that is missed out on during that time, so it can be hard to imagine what it would be like outside of having the eating disorder.
I think all of these can be factors. And I do want to add that even if all of those are true for someone, I don’t think that precludes someone from actually recovering. It can just mean that it is more challenging.
00:35:43
In terms of your question about what are the patterns that I’ve noticed with people who are more chronic, I’d say the thing that comes to mind – and this isn’t true for everyone, but the one thing that comes to mind with clients or people I speak to like this is they can typically tell me everything about eating disorders, about recovery, about the non-diet approach, about Health at Every Size. They can tell me everything but they’re unable to take action. They just have vast amounts of information, vast amounts of knowledge, but this isn’t translating into actually taking action.
I think this is often the problem – someone knows and knows and knows and knows more stuff, and I think it can then become a trap of like “If I can just find out a little more information, then I’ll feel more ready to recover. If I just find out this final thing, that piece will slot in and then I’ll have the confidence or the freedom” or whatever it may be. And I don’t think that that is true. As I said before, I very much believe that eating disorders are an anxiety disorder, and it’s about taking action. I’m very much of the opinion that it’s being dictated by the energy state that someone is in and restriction, whether that be physical restriction or mental restriction. There’s all of these different factors, and the way to really overcome that is to take action. The longer that someone doesn’t take action, the greater the anxiety is, the greater the brain changes are. Those are the things I’ve noticed in terms of patterns with people who are in a chronic situation.
00:37:34
Then in terms of the question about my approach to food or exercise or my approach as a parent with these things, I am incredibly relaxed around food. I prize a healthy relationship with food above all else. This is definitely not what was taught as part of my nutrition training, but this is something that I have because of the work that I do, I’ve really made the core of how I think about food.
In terms of movement, I won’t do any movement or exercises that I do not enjoy. I know there were definitely times in the past where I would go to the gym and lift weights. I don’t really enjoy it, so I will never do that again because I don’t want to spend my time doing something like that that I don’t enjoy. There are plenty of ways I can move my body that I do enjoy, so I’m going to choose those every time.
Some of the other ways it’s impacted me – when I see someone exercising – and this can be irrespective of their body shape. It can be someone who meets the society standard of someone who is fit or beautiful or whatever it may be, or it can be someone in a larger body – I am always asking myself, do they really want to be doing that exercise? I wonder how much they are enjoying this. And it’s the same thing when I see someone eating at a restaurant or out.
I definitely have the opinion or when I’m meeting someone, particularly someone who is in a body that matches up to society’s standards, I’m like, “I wonder how happy they really are.” Because I’ve had so many experiences through doing this work of meeting people and working with people who supposedly have it all and that most people looking in would feel envious of that person, and yet the reality is that they are miserable, and they have huge amounts of insecurities. They’re not happy. So I think that has definitely had an impact on me and definitely not just getting into the halo effect of seeing someone in a ‘good body’ and thinking “They must have the best life” because I know that’s not necessarily true.
In terms of my thoughts around food as a parent, I’ve taken the same approach. We very much follow the Ellyn Satter division of responsibility approach with Ramsay, putting the foods on the table and he gets to choose what he wants to eat from those foods. He’s also someone who probably has some traits and tendencies and genetics that could predispose him to having an eating disorder, so I’m very conscious of not doing anything that is going to make that worse, and he is someone who is more at the picky eater end of the spectrum, and working out how we can best support him with that without putting on pressure, without shame, without any of those things. As I said, I think having a healthy relationship with food and body is just so important.
So that’s one of those things, and we’re very conscious about the way we talk about bodies in the house, the way we talk about food, the way we talk about exercise. Not doing any of these things in a moralising way, not doing any of these things in a stigmatising way, because I can see, and I have seen with so many other clients, how much that’s had an impact. So the work that I’ve done has really changed my thoughts about food and health and lots of other aspects.
00:41:35
The next question is “Dear Chris, I love this invitation. Here are a few questions. One, so many people come to the healing profession to heal themselves. You’ve been honest about your healthy relationship with food and body. How did you wind up working in eating disorders? Two, you and your guests have offered wisdom about polyvagal theory and moving up and down the ladder; how do you do the work you do and not wind up down the ladder? Aren’t we, your eating disorder clients, a bunch of Debbie Downers? And three, where does the name ‘Seven Health’ come from?”
The first question, how did I start working in eating disorders – I finished studying nutrition and really didn’t know what I wanted to work in and just started working seeing everyone. I didn’t specify; it was just like, I can help with anything. For whatever reason, I never said I could help with weight loss. Weight loss was not something I actively promoted. I was never very diet-y in terms of my recommendations, just from the outset. But I was very much a generalised “I can help with digestion, I can help with sleep, I can help with everything.”
What I found through sheer luck was there was a number of clients in a very short amount of time that came to me where they were more at the disordered eating or the early stages of disordered eating end of the spectrum where it wasn’t just about the food that they were eating. There was a lot more going on with them, and I just found that I actually really enjoyed working with these people and really enjoyed the messier side of the human interaction as part of this or the messier side of being a human and trying to navigate this stuff as opposed to “This is how many grams of carbohydrates I think you should have” or “You need to have this thing at this point of the day.” That I found very dry and much preferred the human side of it.
I think if I’d discovered psychology in my teenage years, I probably would’ve studied psychology. I think that would have happened. And I’m kind of happy that that didn’t happen. I think doing the nutrition training gave me such a great understanding of physiology and the nutritional piece, so now working mostly with eating disorders, it’s so helpful to really have that as the background so I have both of these things. So that’s how I ended up working with eating disorders.
And I guess the other part I would add is, as you mentioned, and I’ve mentioned on the show before, I’ve never had an eating disorder myself. I’ve never really struggled with food myself. But I struggled a lot as a teenager, where I did not feel like I fit in. I felt very self-conscious about my body and the fact that I was small, about the fact that all my peers were going through puberty and it didn’t feel like it was happening for me. Really, really had a tough time for many years, and I felt very alone with a lot of that and I felt very isolated with a lot of that. It wasn’t something I was able to talk about very much, or really at all.
While that is not the exact same thing as having an eating disorder, there is a lot that I can relate to in terms of the kinds of emotions that can come up connected to it. So I think that’s part of how I found my way into this work as well: I get this, even though I haven’t had this exact same experience.
00:45:29
The next question is how do I do this work and not be brought down the ladder. For anyone who doesn’t know what this question is relating to in terms of polyvagal theory, I’ve done a whole episode about this. It’s with Deb Dana, and again, I’ll link to it in the show notes. Basically, with polyvagal theory, you have three places in the nervous system you can be. This is very simplifying it. It can be at the top of the ladder, which is safe and social, in the middle point of the ladder, which is fight or flight, and at the bottom of the ladder, which is in shutdown. Having interactions with people, having things happen in life can then have an impact on where you are on the ladder.
In terms of the question of how do I not get affected by this, two things. One, I do really prioritise self-care and the things that really matter for me in terms of how I can take care of myself. For me, a lot of that is time in nature; it’s eating regularly, it’s eating enough; it’s getting lots of sleep, where I prioritise sleep above all else in many ways. I spend a lot of time reading, I spend a lot of time having alone time, because I’m definitely an introvert, and knowing that that’s important as a way of recovering. I love living in the countryside and being in that kind of setting, which I think is better for my nervous system. I’m getting better with seeing friends. I think the pandemic really messed with that for me, but I’m back doing that more regularly.
So being very conscious of “I need to do these things to manage my nervous system and my mental health” and being conscious of what really helps on that front.
But the other part I would add to this – and this is something I discovered more recently; I talked about this in my last life update episode – is that after Ali, my wife, had an accident – she was thrown off her horse and tore her tricep from her elbow and she needed to have surgery, so we had a very difficult number of months. I had quite a bit of time where I wasn’t seeing clients and I was just looking after Ramsay and her.
What I noticed was despite how stressful this time was, when I cancelled everything and said, “All I’m going to do is look after Ramsay and Ali”, it was actually a less stressful time. It was when I then came back and started to do work again that I noticed how much that would have a stress on me. And not just the client side, but the running of the business, the financial side, all of those different things. I actually don’t think I’m as good as managing those things as I thought I was, and I think it does have an impact on my nervous system more than I was either letting on or was able even to see myself.
So what I’ve done – and I can’t remember when I started this; it was probably in the February time or maybe the March time – is I now do a four-day week. I work Monday through Thursday, and I have Friday, Saturday, Sunday off every week, and during that time I don’t check emails, I don’t do any work. I’ve realised that I actually need to do that to be able to do this job and to be able to not just take care of myself, but then when I am at home and being a partner or being a parent, I can actually do that effectively. Working five days, the reality is, now that I’ve noticed the difference when I wasn’t working, I’m just not as good at being able to do that unless I’m getting time off. So that really has been the way that I’ve been successful with doing that.
00:49:35
Then the final one was the name. Seven Health, I chose that – the idea behind it was there’s seven days in a week, so it was meant to symbolise health for every day, health for all the time, as opposed to doing fad diets or doing detoxes or doing those kinds of things where it’s like, “I’m going to do this thing for four weeks and then I’m going to go back to what I was doing before” or whatever it may be. So it was very much meant to symbolise everyday health.
I’m actually not particularly enamoured with the name. I think if I had my time over again, I would change it. And I actually explored changing it. I think it was three or three and a half years ago, whenever I redid my website, I actually explored changing the name. I spoke to a number of friends who really understand this stuff and are business consultants and got feedback from many different people, and the unanimous feedback was “Don’t change the name. Just keep it as it is.” So that’s why it’s Seven Health and why it is still Seven Health.
00:50:49
The next question is – again, it’s a two-part question: “One, does recovery look different for someone in their forties? Are there other things to consider when recovering? And two, before working on eating disorder or HA (hypothalamic amenorrhea, so not having a period) recovery, is it better to get hormonal testing, functional medicine practitioner work done? Or should this be considered once eating, overcoming fear foods and rules have been dealt with?”
The first question in terms of recovery, is it different in the forties – I would say yes and no. The ‘no’ part is all of the fundamentals are still the same. You still need to be doing nutritional rehabilitation. You still need to have the physical body be able to repair. You still need to do the neural rewiring so that the nervous system and the brain and everything think differently about things like food and exercise, etc. There needs to be a learning of healthy coping skills and managing and expressing emotions. There needs to be work on self-worth. There’s lots of things where it doesn’t matter whether someone is 13, 30, 60 – all of these things are still the same, irrespective of someone’s age.
Where I would say it is different is that when someone is in their forties – and I’m answering this as if someone is a woman, because this is the person who’s asked this, but I also think the same is true for men – there is a change in hormones. But particularly with women, they’re going through menopause. At this age, physical healing can take longer than someone who is in their twenties or their teens. So yes, it takes longer to recover, and I think that needs to be kept in mind.
Depending on the length of time, habits can be more entrenched. Someone who’s in their forties, if they developed their eating disorder in their teens, that is a lot longer period for those habits to be entrenched versus someone who developed an eating disorder two years ago or five years ago. So I think the time that something’s been entrenched can have an impact. And obviously age and being older allows something to have gone on for longer.
I also think there’s just more constraints and things going on in someone’s life when they’re 40 or above than when someone’s younger. This, again, is not always the case, but a lot of the time when working with clients, they now have kids, they have a mortgage, they have aging parents, they have a job they’re trying to attend to. There’s so much more going on for that person that is just not the case for someone who is in their twenties or even someone who’s in their thirties. Someone who is younger often has more space to be able to deal with these things. So I think that can be a challenge in that there just is a lot more things on someone’s plate as they’re older. Again, this isn’t always the case, but this is often true for a lot of the clients I work with.
00:54:21
In terms of the other question about the functional medicine practitioner, I’m not against getting some baseline tests done to start with, and I think this is definitely true if someone has HA. I think it would be really important to get some tests done to have a look at what is going on with FHS and LH and oestrogen, etc. I think you actually need this to give someone a diagnosis of hypothalamic amenorrhea. So I think that is important.
But other than that, I would say I would not be recommending someone work with a functional medicine practitioner. And a lot of this is to do with so much of the biases that someone who is a functional medicine practitioner typically has about “You should not be eating gluten or you shouldn’t be eating dairy” or “These vitamins and minerals are really important” or “We need to do this barrage of tests to see all of these different things” that I actually think are not just irrelevant as part of eating disorder recovery, but actually can then fill someone’s head with other ideas that mean that “Oh, maybe I don’t need to eat more food” or “Maybe I don’t need to put on weight” or “Maybe I don’t need to do all of these other things that are important as part of my recovery”, especially if someone’s getting their period back as well.
So I would be really hesitant to say working with a functional medicine practitioner because I think what is likely to happen is it creates more doubts, it creates more fear foods. It’s likely that you will be put on or suggested some kind of diet. What someone needs who is struggling with an eating disorder or someone who is wanting to get their period back is working with someone who is an expert and knows this area. And I think there are too many people I’ve worked with who have struggled with both of these things – eating disorders, trying to get their period back – and have worked with multitudes of people who have not made anything better and have made things worse.
In the strongest terms, I would say don’t work with a functional medicine practitioner if this is what you have going on.
00:56:42
The next question is, “Chris, I would love to know how women in recovery reboot their metabolism and thyroid. I’m 59, eat healthily, mainly plant-based with some cheese. I’ve been in recovery several years. I’ve gone up a complete size in the past six months. I’m starting to freak a little. I’m on mediation for hypothyroidism past year.”
The thing I always say with this is a reduced metabolism is adaptive. When food is restricted, metabolism is restricted. And not just food is restricted; when the energy balance is reduced, then metabolism is reduced. So someone could be eating a ‘normal’ amount of food but doing an amount of exercise that is excessive for the amount of food that is coming in.
As I mentioned with the very first question, from an evolutionary perspective, it makes sense that the body is prioritising survival. If there’s less resources coming in for what the body needs, then it’s “We’re just going to shut this thing down or reduce this thing because we don’t have the resources to spend on it.”
With recovery, the first priority for the body is fat regain, and often fat regain around the abdominal or stomach region. Then after this point, it starts to repair bone and lean tissue and organs and the brain, etc. But this takes time. I think too often, what happens is people will gain weight and they’ll notice the weight has gone on, so then they put on the brakes again, and really no true recovery has taken place in terms of dealing with the organs and lean tissue and bone, etc. It’s just that the weight has gone on, and there is this fear of “Gosh, this is going to go on exponentially.”
And I understand all of these fears, but I think we need to remember the order of healing that the body takes as part of recovery. This is something I go through in a lot of detail in the episode I did on the Minnesota Starvation Experiment, so if you haven’t listened to that episode, I would highly recommend you do. I’ll put it in the show notes. I’ve actually done three or maybe even four episodes on it. It’s the most recent one that I’ve done on it which brings together all of the information that I’ve read and thought about in connection with the Minnesota Starvation Experiment, so I would definitely check that out.
I would also add I think there’s this misconception that a faster metabolism means that someone will be lean, and this is not necessarily the case, and it’s definitely not necessarily the case in the early stages of recovery. What defines early stages isn’t just the amount of time, but what has happened during that time, how much repair and recovery has actually taken place during that time.
Given your age, recovery is going to be slower. I don’t know what your current weight is, and I don’t know what your weight was before you had these issues, and I don’t know where your body wants your weight to be naturally and I don’t know where your body wants your weight to be so it can complete all the recovery as part of this. I can understand, as you said, that recovery feels like it’s gone on for a long time and that you’ve gone up a size in the last six months, but none of those things tell me any information about how far you are as part of this recovery journey, because I don’t know about all of your various symptoms. I don’t know how much you’ve been eating or exercising or any of those kinds of things.
The fact that you are on medication for your thyroid would probably indicate to me that there is still a lot more recovery to take place, because it’s very common for clients that I work with that their thyroid numbers are terrible when we start. This isn’t always the case but is often the case. Then as recovery gets better and better, that improves, which again points to the adaptive side of things. The body is adapting to the fact that there hasn’t been enough resources coming in.
I also did, many, many, many years ago, an episode all about energy flux, which I think is something that would be useful to listen to. Again, I’ll put it in the show notes for this episode. But it looks at the idea of you can be in a situation where you’re taking in 1,500 calories, you’re burning 1,500 calories, and you’re in energy balance, or you’re in a situation where you’re taking in 3,000 calories and burning 3,000 calories and you’re in energy balance.
In both those situations you’re in energy balance, but the second scenario is there’s double the amount of energy coming in. It’s not that you’re then using that extra part of that solely for exercise. It’s that your body is giving more resources to your digestive system, giving more resources to your nervous system, giving more resources to your reproductive system, etc. So by having more of these things, it’s upregulating all of these systems, and they can work better. That to me is really what an improved metabolism is about: how do you support the body to be using more and more? That typically relates to taking in more food, but there are other parts connected to this. So that’s one of the things I would say, and I would check out that podcast episode.
One thing you did mention is “I’m mainly plant-based with some cheese.” This for me is a little bit of a red flag. I’m not saying that someone can’t be vegetarian or vegan or plant-based and recover, but I’m sceptical of that, often, because of what I’ve seen with clients, because of what I’ve seen online, because of how easily that can mean that someone is missing out on important components in terms of protein and nutrients as part of that. But more it’s a very slippery slope for other restriction to be taking place. So that would be something I would be questioning as part of the recovery. As I said, it’s not that it can’t happen, but I’m unsure, is that having an impact as well.
01:03:47
The next question is actually a three-part question. One: “In all these years of working with clients, please describe one case that particularly stuck in your memory that impressed you or surprised you in the most positive way or one that surprised or frustrated you in the most negative way.”
I think this is kind of like the question I had earlier, where I really do think that with every client, there are things that surprise me and impress me. There’s not one that comes to mind. I’ve tried to think about this. There is a client that comes to mind where we were working on trying to get her period back, she was really desperate to have a child, and she was able to conceive without actually getting a period, was able to have a child, and was able to do that naturally – something she never thought would be possible, and she had been told many times that that would never be able to happen. So I think that one – while it doesn’t surprise me because I can understand how it can work from a physiological standpoint, it was very lovely, and she was just so happy about that. So that one really sticks in my mind.
In terms of frustrated, this is much more than frustrated. I had a client that I worked with, and we’d worked together I think for nearly a year and really struggled for her to make changes. She’d make some changes and then she’d fall back. She was just not in a good way. It felt really hard and disappointing that we hadn’t been able to make those changes, and then we stopped working together, and then about – I can’t remember, six months later or a year later, I sent her an email just to say, “Hey, I just want to check in. I think of you and I just want to find out how you’re doing.” I got an email back from her sister saying that she had committed suicide, and that was a lot. I think that really stuck with me in a negative way, that someone was in such a horrible place with this and that their eating disorder had had such an impact on them that that was how things came to an end. So that’s probably, of all the clients, the one that sticks out the most as one of the most painful.
01:06:44
The second question was “Have you ever considered expanding your business to foreign-speaking markets through collaborations or partnerships such as a Seven Health franchise in another country?”
The answer is no. I don’t speak another language. I’m currently learning Spanish on Duolingo, but I could order a glass of water or a coffee but that’s about it. I have tried expanding my business before with English-speaking practitioners and it didn’t work. So I’ve come to the stage now where I’m very happy with Seven Health being just me. So no, I have no intentions of trying to expand this.
And I wouldn’t even know how to start with a franchise because of the very specific nature of what I do and the specific understanding of all of these different issues that go into working with clients. So yeah, I think that it’s just going to be me who is part of Seven Health. So in answer to the question, no, I won’t be expanding, especially into foreign languages.
01:08:15
The final question is, “If you had a goldfish that could fulfil only one secret personal wish, which one would it be?”
If this is a personal wish, and it is a personal wish just for me – so it’s not wishing for world peace or wishing that every person that I know that I love wouldn’t die – I think it would be to have more equanimity, to be stronger and be more calm as both a parent and a partner. I think it would be to have more of that inner strength and calmness. I think that’s an area I struggle with, and I don’t know if that comes as a surprise from listening to me on the podcast or things I’ve said previously, but I think that’s probably an area where I would wish to be stronger, and to have more of that inner resolve, I think would be the thing I would ask from the goldfish.
01:09:30
The next question – and there’s a bit of a preamble with this just explaining what’s going on: “My situation is that I’m a mid-life woman who has struggled with compulsive eating for many years. I started using food to manage my feelings from a very young age. In my early thirties, I discovered a group called Overeaters Anonymous and learned a lot about my eating behaviours and recovery in that decade when I was involved with OA. I’ve also explored other dimensions of recovery through seeing a specialist ED counsellor and was exposed to the concept of intuitive eating at this time to continue to work on my recovery. At the moment, I’m getting a lot of thoughtful inspiration from your blog and podcast and other sources, such as the Eating Disorder Recovery Podcast.
“I have two things I’m interested in hearing more about. One, I read your blog quite frequently and listen to some podcasts. I can’t help but feel that they are particularly directed towards people who have experienced anorexia rather than other types of eating disorders such as compulsive eating. I found the discourse about restriction and letting go of all ideas about restriction quite interesting and challenging. I’m exploring where to fit or sit on the continuum between restriction and non-restriction. I can understand that people who have restricted to the point of being anorexic need to work on moving to non-restriction.
“While I’m observing that I have a restrictive mindset at times, usually in response to eating less than perfectly, I also find having boundaries around food is quite useful and important for me. For example, I don’t keep packets of biscuits at home – haven’t for years. I don’t buy king-size blocks of chocolate. If I want chocolate, I’ll buy a small snack-size bar. I don’t buy large packets of crisps; I’ll buy a small one. I need to create boundaries so that when I may be vulnerable to using food, the escape/binge type food isn’t readily available. Of course, I can always take a trip down to the supermarket, but that extra step needed can be enough to prevent a binge. I also follow an eating plan that does involve some weighing, particularly for the evening meal for the carbs and protein. I found this method of portion control helpful because I’m in my fifties and I’m really keen to maintain a weight that’s in proportion to my height to help me live longer and have a good quality of life.”
The reason I talk about restriction so much is because I really do believe that it is at the heart of all eating disorders, not just anorexia. In your question and all the things that you talked about, you said many things that would point to that: that there is restriction going on. You don’t keep certain foods in your house. You weigh and measure some of your meals. You have a focus on portions to manage your weight. There is a belief that to live a healthy life, you have to manage your weight and manage your portions. These are all forms of restriction, both from a physical standpoint and from a mental standpoint. In a lot of ways, it is saying to your body, “I don’t trust you, and I need to manage you.”
Like a child who has never had sweets in their house and then goes over to a friend’s house who does have sweets and eats loads, this is the same kind of thing. From my experience, this approach that you’re talking about works until it doesn’t. I do work with clients who have binge eating disorder. I’ve worked with clients who describe themselves as compulsive eaters. I also have many clients who have bulimia, who also try to not have certain foods in the house.
In all of these cases, the issues for the client appear to be the eating of too much food or having certain foods in the house or that “When I’m stressed, I comfort myself with food”, but always when we dig deeper, the restriction is driving this or is at least a big part of this.
If you were my client, dealing with all of these types of restrictions would be a big part of what I would be wanting to address. It could be doing this through intuitive eating, it could be doing it through writing exercises, it could be doing it through actual food challenges. But I think just from reading your question alone, I can see how much of an impact this is actually having in terms of how you think about this as a problem and the ways that you try and deal with this as a problem.
I really like Caroline Dooner’s book The F*ck It Diet. I think she talks a lot about this, and I think maybe there’s stuff in there that you could resonate with. But the reason I talk about restriction is because, at least from my perspective, as you’ve demonstrated with your question and the things you’re doing, it is a really big part of what is going on.
01:14:46
The second part of your question is “This brings me to my second area of interest that I’m not sure I’ve heard you address: eating disorders in mid-life (mid-life being 45 to 65 age range). Mid-life for women brings menopause, changing energy levels, changing of shape for some women. Having boundaries in food, perhaps a type of portion control, is something to be considered. Metabolism slows, the body starts to age, and I’m keen to keep up the hiking and other physical activities as long as possible. Some sort of weight control is important to protect the joints from wearing out too early. I’d absolutely love an episode on eating disorders in mid-life, the balance between intuitive eating, non-restriction, and boundaries around food to maintain health as long as possible.”
I talked earlier about some of the similarities and the differences with eating disorders in mid-life, so I’m not going to repeat that here, but again, the question here demonstrates the restrictive mindset – the portion control, the boundaries around food, the worrying about your joints because of putting on weight.
For me, again, this is about trust. At this point, at least from the way you’re phrasing the question, the thing that comes up for me is I wonder how much you believe you can trust your body. Do you believe that if you’re not keeping it on some kind of leash, it won’t run away with itself? It won’t just eat and eat and eat, and if you do that, that you’ll only eat unhealthy food and you’re only ever going to be unhealthy? Because for me, depending on how you answer that question, I think that is a core part of this – the trust component and the trust in your body.
What I like about intuitive eating is it helps someone to really learn how to build that trust and to have a healthy relationship with food and to learn how to eat the types of foods and the amount of food that the body needs without having to have portion control and without having to have boundaries. I truly believe that the body knows how to be healthy and knows how to do this, and it’s the job of just relearning how that can happen.
The next episode that is coming out of this podcast is with Michelle Vina-Baltsas, and she developed binge eating in her teen years and this went on for decades. She was also part of Overeaters Anonymous, I think for 9 or 10 years, and we chatted about this. At first, she loved it, but with time she grew to see that it wasn’t helpful. She then found intuitive eating and through this helped to repair her relationship with food and with her body. She did this also alongside other therapy, and she is someone who is in mid-life as well. I think it would definitely be useful for you to have a listen to that episode. You can also reach out to Michelle and think about working with her, as she’s definitely someone who has walked a mile in your shoes.
So if it feels to you like I don’t know about this stuff because I don’t have personal experience like this, I’m not a lady or a woman in mid-life, then speak to Michelle, because she is someone whose story does very much sound like it matches up with yours. She’s just got to a different stage to where you’re currently at. So that would be my thought on that, and I would definitely say from reading your responses, restriction is definitely at the heart of what is going on here and is still a big component with it.
01:18:52
The final question is, “In one of your blog posts you recently reposted called ‘Is My Metabolism Broken?’, it says ‘If you start to rest and repair but then become scared and begin reducing food again and upping exercise, then your metabolism is going to stall and you’ll have a situation just like in the Biggest Loser study.’ While you repeatedly state that a slowed metabolism can be restored, this part sounds to me as though there is a point where this does not work well anymore. I’m wondering if, in your opinion, this is actually the case. This is my exact situation. Have a phase of increasing my food intake, I became scared and began to reduce food intake again, though this was without losing weight as opposed to the way it was in the past. So I’m wondering if I can still assume that my metabolism will adapt if I increase my food intake again, or should I rather assume that my body has gotten used to smaller amounts of food?”
As I talked about earlier in another question in terms of metabolism, metabolism is adaptive. If you eat more food, it will increase again. In the beginning, more food will be stored as fat because that’s just the way the body works, but the body then will change. In the beginning, it is cautious. It’s coming out of a famine of sorts, and it doesn’t know what’s going to happen. But with time, it improves. So I’m definitely of the belief that metabolisms don’t become permanently broken.
Look, metabolism does change over one’s life. There is a difference in someone’s metabolism when they’re 20 versus when they’re 40 versus when they’re 70. So if someone is in their fifties and they’re comparing to where their metabolism was in their twenties and wondering why it’s not the same, of course it’s not going to be the same. There is a difference, and there are reasons for that in terms of various hormones that are going on when we’re younger versus when we’re older. So yes, that is where there can be a difference.
But in terms of ‘is my metabolism permanently broken’, I don’t think that is the case. Again, as I said in the earlier question, just because someone is in a body that isn’t lean, doesn’t mean their metabolism is broken. It’s not like “I know my metabolism is now working properly because I’m carrying no fat and I’ve got a lean stomach” and all of those things. That is not the same thing. That is especially the case as someone gets older. But I do want to reiterate, I don’t think that you’ve broken your metabolism. I would say that if you start to do the things again that can repair and help as part of recovery, it will improve.
So that is it for this Ask Me Anything episode. I’m just blown away that I’m at 250 episodes of this show. I really appreciate all of you guys for listening and that this is part of my job and something I get to do on a very regular basis. It’s wonderful. So thank you so much for listening to this episode, for listening to past episodes.
As I mentioned at the top, I’m currently taking on clients. If you want help with any of the kinds of stuff that I’ve talked about today, then please reach out. It’s www.seven-health.com/help. Get in contact.
I’ll be back next time with the next episode, as I said, with Michelle. Until then, take care of yourself and I’ll catch you soon.
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