290: Reaching A Place Of Full Recovery With Jayne Cudia

Chris Sandel: Welcome to Episode 290 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/290.

Hey, everyone. Welcome back to another episode of Real Health Radio. I’m your host, Chris Sandel. I’m a nutritionist and a coach, and I help clients to fully recover.

Before I get started with today’s episode, I have an announcement to make. I’m currently hosting a free 3-part live training series. It’s called How to Fully Recover From an Eating Disorder. I’m recording this in advance, but from when this episode airs, the first training will have been last Thursday, on Thursday the 8th, and there are two more trainings this week, on Tuesday (tomorrow) and then Thursday. This isn’t the same training that I’m doing on each day, but it’s a training series.

If you missed the first training, that is fine. You can still sign up, and there is a replay of that original training that you can watch, and then you can join for the other trainings live.

I did a similar training back in September time of last year, and the feedback was really incredible. I want to share a couple of snippets of emails that I received from last time.

One said, “I’ve had an eating disorder for almost three decades at this point and I found your information more helpful than an entire treatment stay.” Another one, “Thank you so much for caring enough to offer your time and energy to helping others.” Another, “I wanted to thank you for providing this very, very helpful information and sharing your approach to reaching full recovery. I would like you to know that I would’ve paid for this training. That’s how valuable it was to me.”

Then the final one: “I want to thank you for taking the time to create these three trainings. They’re probably the most helpful 5-½ hours I’ve ever had in my recovery, and I’ve been at this nearly three decades. After many inpatient, residential, PHP, and IOP stays, this is invaluable information that is tangible, doable, and understandable. I’ve never met someone to have such an insight into eating disorders that hasn’t had one themselves. Thank you again. I really appreciate you.”

The trainings really landed with people, and from the comments, you can hear how valuable and practical it was. So if you would like to register to be part of it, you can go to the show notes, www.seven-health.com/288, and there you can click to register. Now, on to today’s show.

This week on the show, I am interviewing Jayne Cudia. Jayne is actually a past client of mine, and I’m interviewing her about her recovery and her experience with working together.

I first started working with Jayne back in July of 2021. For about 18 months, we were doing consults every two weeks, so we were pretty intense in terms of our working together, and there was back-and-forth correspondence during this time. Then after those 18 months, Jayne was in a fairly solid place with her recovery, so we then transitioned to doing more of a maintenance package or maintenance phase with it where we would have consults every two months, and then we could do correspondence between calls. We kept this up for the last year and had our final consult in December time. So we worked together for a period of two and a half years. Over this time, Jayne has completely changed her relationship with food and exercise and her thoughts about weight and her body, and she’s gone from being in the depths of an eating disorder to making a full recovery.

As part of this episode, we talk about how her eating disorder began; her originally believing that she’d be able to start making changes on her own but then realising that she couldn’t at the pivotal point, roughly nine months into her recovery, that really made all the difference; her extreme hunger and her then giving herself permission to eat; taking time off exercise and reintroducing it; studying as a dietitian while in recovery; and so much more.

It’s incredible what Jayne has accomplished over these last two and a half years. It was not easy by any stretch, and she’s such a great example of what is possible in recovery, because I truly believe that what Jayne achieved is possible for everyone.

We don’t talk about it in this interview, but Jayn is going to be part of the Fundamentals of Full Recovery programme that I run. I’m not actually going to say too much about it here, as she’s involved in something that is completely new to the programme that’s coming when I re-launch it shortly. So if you are part of the programme, you’ll be hearing more from Jayne and seeing more of Jayne. And if you want to be part of the programme, you can go to the show notes at www.seven-health.com/290. You can sign up to go on the waitlist. Obviously, while you’re there you can also sign up for the live 3-part training series that I’m currently doing.

Anyway, let’s get on with the interview. Here is my conversation with Jayne Cudia.

Hey, Jayne. Thanks for joining me today and doing this interview with me.

Jayne Cudia: Hey, Chris. Thank you. I’m so excited to be here and share a little bit about my story and about working with you.

00:05:30

How Jayne’s eating disorder started

Chris Sandel: Nice. I guess as a starting place, talk about your eating disorder and when it started.

Jayne Cudia: I think on the surface, my eating disorder started as a result of the beginning of the pandemic. In March 2020, I had just got my junior year of college cut short. I went home to my parents’ house and I was very bored, and I used that time to go on a diet and lose those 5 pounds that I thought were holding me back kind of thing. I really think that was probably a result of the anxiety about what was going on in the world and just really wanting to have some sort of control.

Chris Sandel: Prior to that happening, what had your relationship with food been like?

Jayne Cudia: I remember when we first met, I was like, “Oh yeah, before that one diet that turned into an eating disorder, I had no problem with food at all before.” That’s what it felt like at that time. It felt like it was my first diet. And I guess it kind of was, but I think there were some warning signs that I just didn’t catch, but that led up to this point in time. I think the pandemic was a catalyst for the development of an eating disorder for me, but there were other things.

Like when I was nine years old and playing with a friend and we would go on her parents’ exercise equipment – why did we want to do that? Or when I was like 13, drinking this psyllium husk fibre out of my parents’ cabinet and not eating anything that day. There were warning signs. I think I didn’t maybe take things to heart too much, so I maybe did these behaviours but then the next day I’d be like “I’m fine.”

I never really had a super negative body image, thankfully, and I guess my weight was always pretty consistent over time. But I received all the messages that everyone does from society and stuff, so I think it all just came to a head during that time.

Chris Sandel: You said it started as part of the pandemic; how long did it take before you recognised “This is now a problem and I want to recover”?

Jayne Cudia: It really didn’t take me long to realise I had a problem, but it did take me longer to realise that I wanted to actually do something about it and recover. I was looking through some of my journals. I have like seven journals filled all through this time, which is amazing. I said it started in March 2020 when the pandemic hit, and then on May 27th, 2020, I wrote in my diary: “I’ve been kinda obsessing over the whole calorie thing. I don’t want to create an eating disorder, of course. I just also don’t want to throw away all my hard work by going back to eating bad / high-cal foods.” And then I said what the scale had read that day and whatever.

That was two months in, and I knew I had a problem, but I didn’t see how – I just didn’t want to stop, I guess.

Chris Sandel: And when you say “I knew I had a problem”, what indicated that it was a problem? Your inability to do something different? Or was it something else that was telling you it was a problem?

Jayne Cudia: I think I just was obsessed with the food and the calories. I couldn’t lighten up at all. I couldn’t get out of it. It was satisfying to see my weight loss, and I was like, “There’s no way I could gain weight again.” I was enthralled with what I was doing, and I didn’t necessarily want to keep living that way, but I was just petrified of gaining the weight back that I had lost. And this was like 5-10 pounds. It wasn’t really anything too much, but that was super important to me to keep going.

And then the goal weight always dropped. I wanted to be this weight, then 5 pounds lower, then 5 pounds lower. Another added layer was I was going back to college, and I had a lot of emotions about that. I knew I was going to be drinking with my friends more and eating different foods that I wasn’t eating when I was at home with my parents. So I had justified what I was doing by saying “When I go back to college, I’m going to be eating more. I’ll probably gain 5-10 pounds back. So let me just use this time to lose as much as I can now, and then if I gain a few, whatever, it’ll be no big deal.”

Obviously I got back to college and it was a huge problem for me. It didn’t go away. I knew I had a problem and then I kind of wanted to recover; I didn’t want to be thinking about food all the time. I didn’t want to have all the symptoms that I had, which I’ll go into in a second. But I also just didn’t have it in me to intentionally gain weight. That was something I was not willing to do at that time.

00:10:53

The symptoms she was experiencing

Chris Sandel: Tell us about the symptoms. What symptoms were going on? Obviously you’ve mentioned the obsessiveness and the fear that was there, but what else was going on? Both physical symptoms but then also mental/emotional symptoms.

Jayne Cudia: Mental/emotional, I had no energy. I was exhausted all day, and part of that was because I was not eating enough. I had no energy. Another part was just because of how I was operating. I had that brain that was like “Wake up at 6:00 a.m. and go to the gym, come home, study, do this, do this.” I had no time to rest. I was exhausted. My friendships suffered. I was still with my same group of friends and stuff, but I wasn’t putting my energy into it. I couldn’t maintain relationships with partners and stuff either.

And then physically, I was freezing cold. I remember it was like 60 degrees Fahrenheit one night and I was out with my friends and everyone was in crop tops and tank tops and I was in a winter coat. I thought it was funny. Somehow it was satisfying to have some of these symptoms because I was like, “Wow, I did it. I achieved it” – which is so twisted to think. My hair was super thin. I had a lot of hormonal acne, which I was super insecure about. I would sweat profusely in my sleep. I would wake up to urinate multiple times in the night and then not be able to go back to sleep.

I was obsessed with my physical appearance and how I was being perceived by others. Obviously I was extremely hungry every single minute of the day, which was super distracting and very uncomfortable. I exercised obsessively. I didn’t think I had a problem with exercise, but I did, obviously. I had to go to the gym five to six days a week. If I didn’t, it was earth-shattering.

I remember one time – this is all coming back to me – I was in my college apartment, and I think the gym was closed or for some reason I couldn’t go to the gym. My bedroom was tiny, and I put on my workout gear and I was doing ab workout on the carpet floor of my bedroom. I was being quiet. I don’t think I wanted to wake up my roommates. It was very odd. But I was obsessed with exercise.

I was miserable. I lost my period. I was super constipated all the time. All of the things, pretty much.

00:13:28

How + why she decided to start recovery

Chris Sandel: What did it feel like to then get in contact with me and make that decision towards “Okay, I do want to start recovering”? What tipped it in that direction? Was there an event? Just talk about making the decision to start recovery.

Jayne Cudia: When I was in college, I received a message from my university’s psychological health services – pretty much somebody can report you saying “I’m concerned about this individual, can you go check on them?” and then you get a phone call from a counsellor. I got one, and I felt a lot of emotions. I felt like “Oh my God, I can’t believe it got to this point where people are recognising I have a problem”, but also I was still in that mindset of “Wow, I must be really skinny. People are concerned that I’m too skinny? Oh my God!” But that was the eating disorder brain. The true self realised, “This is a problem. I didn’t mean for it to go this far.”

So I would see a counsellor for a few sessions. I didn’t get so much out of it. I actually met with a nutritionist twice, I think, and we just weren’t a good fit. I didn’t feel like she really understood the gravity of what I was going through. I was finishing up my final year of college; I think I was unable to make changes because I was petrified of the circle that I surrounded myself with seeing me gain weight. So I was like, “Let me just wait a few months till I graduate and I’m back home with my parents, and then I will actually fix this.”

I was listening to your podcast. I remember being on the treadmill at the gym and running and listening to your podcast. It’s just funny because it’s like – I don’t know, the opposite of the message that you’re trying to give. But I couldn’t allow myself to take any action, even though I was preparing myself, I guess, mentally. Like understanding I have a problem, understanding a little bit of the science behind it, but that wasn’t enough. I couldn’t make any changes on my own.

So then once I got back, it was the summertime, and I was like “All right, he’s pretty much speaking to me on his podcast. I am the client.” [laughs] So I just reached out, and it worked out.

Chris Sandel: What made me stand out from other coaches or nutritionists? Why did you reach out to me? What was it in the podcast that resonated so much?

Jayne Cudia: I think it was just how much information you know. I felt like if anybody could help me through this, it would be you. I just felt like you were super insightful. You actually stuck to the facts, and I really like the science behind things. You walk through that in a way that is easy to understand. Especially for people with anorexia or certain eating disorders, the details and understanding the science behind things is very important to them. So I think that made me feel comfortable, like “I can trust him. He knows exactly what I’m going through and he knows how to fix it.” I think that’s why it worked. We met once and I was like, “I’m sold. Let’s keep meeting. Let’s do it.”

But I was still very nervous at that point of gaining weight. I wanted to recover, but I didn’t want to gain weight, and obviously I found out that is not possible. But it did take me a minute to get there.

Chris Sandel: How did it feel when you found out that bit of information?

Jayne Cudia: I think I was devastated. I was like, “Wait, I can’t just start eating normally and just be normal about this and stay where I’m at but start eating normally?” I think it was a realisation that, wow, diet culture and whoever sets you up for this doesn’t tell you a way out, at all. They’re like, “Diets fail, people gain weight.” It’s like, what else are they supposed to do? Having an eating disorder forever is literally the only option.

It was a hard pill to swallow, but then ultimately, based on the work we did, the conversations we had and everything, I was like, okay, I’d rather gain weight and be done with this.

00:18:00

What our work together looked like

Chris Sandel: Then describe a little, from your perspective, what our work together looked like.

Jayne Cudia: At first, the biggest thing was to get me eating more, because I was just not in a good place metabolically and anything like that. I remember I got labs done and sent them to you to make sure I was okay. I think the first goal we had was eat breakfast within one hour of waking up, because I was ravenously hungry when I woke up in the morning, but for some reason needed to wait three hours. I don’t know. So I remember we did that.

We bulked up the food that I was eating so I felt comfortable about it. It was probably still like almonds on my salad. It wasn’t really true letting loose, but it was something to get more energy in. And then once I got there, I think it was more of processing stuff and identity, values. I loved that, what we did, figuring out, “Who do you want to be without the eating disorder? What do you want to stand for? Do you want the most important thing in your life to be what you look like, or do you want to care about other things? It’s okay if you don’t right now because right now your biggest value is being skinny. But do you want that to be the rest of your life?” I think that was super important.

And then also just identifying my own fatphobia and like, why am I petrified to gain weight? Why? What’s the root issue there? And then finally, after months of kind of recovering, whatever, being at a stable place but still being baseline kind of hungry and not fully there yet, and then being like “All right, I’m so done with this. This is too prolonged for me. I’m just going to eat everything I need.” And it was a lot.

Chris Sandel: I do remember that. If I’m thinking about it in phases, there was this first phase where yes, you were making changes, but it was all pretty conservative, and there was still a lot of ‘healthy’ eating as part of it. And then you reached a tipping point – I actually remember the actual session where there was this realisation of like “What I’ve been doing, yes, it started a little bit of momentum, but no, I’m not going to fully recover if I keep doing this.”

And am I remembering correctly – was it The F*ck It Diet? Did you read that and that had a pretty big impact on you?

Jayne Cudia: Yes, I read it like twice. [laughs] The first time I read it, I understood it but I didn’t really take it to heart so much. The second time I read it was probably like nine months later, and by that point I had done a lot of work but I still was just not really ready to go all-in, as she says in the book. But I don’t know. The last shoe dropped, whatever, and I was like, “I’m gonna do it.”

And I literally would eat like six peanut butter and jelly sandwiches as a snack and then move on, and just sitting with the feeling of like “Okay, I did that, and that’s fine, and I’m going to eat something again in another hour because I’m going to be hungry again.” I had extreme hunger, and I finally let myself eat and gain weight and had to buy bigger clothes and had to go about my day, and people didn’t comment on it. The Earth literally was still moving. It was not a big deal to other people.

I just showed myself, okay, nobody cares. You’re fine in this bigger body. You’re still okay. I had to work on obviously body image stuff and just adjusting to the big change, because I think for about the first nine months that we worked together, I gained a decent – whatever, some weight – but I still had felt comfortable with where I was and I didn’t want to gain any more. And then after, when I went on this ‘fuck it’ approach, all bets were off and I started gaining way more weight. Yeah, it was uncomfortable, but it was what I had to do to get where I am now.

Chris Sandel: Yeah, and it is that period where you then started eating more, you gained more weight. But the thing I always want to get across to people is it’s not gaining weight in a vacuum. You’re doing that so that, from a physical standpoint, a lot of healing can take place, but also from a mental standpoint, that’s how so much of the rewiring of the brain starts to change. That’s how your perspective changed, your outlook changed, you discovered that you are more resilient than you were feeling before doing all of this.

So I think it’s really important for people to understand it’s not just “I’m gaining weight.” There’s all of these things that happen alongside it that are so beneficial.

Jayne Cudia: Yes, exactly. It’s the psychological piece of while you’re gaining weight, are you like “Oh no, I’m so scared, this is bad”, whatever – that’s not working. Or if you’re like “I’m fully accepting. This is my situation. This is my body. It’s going to change. Let me listen to my hunger and feed myself as much as I need. Okay, no problem. Now I’m going to have lunch.” That was the approach I was taking. It was hard, but I did a lot of work before that, so I was able to really detach and be ready for that.

But yeah, exactly, you can’t just eat a lot and be like “Perfecto, my eating disorder will go away.” It has to go alongside, like what you were saying, everything else.

Chris Sandel: Do you remember how long that extreme hunger lasted for in your case?

Jayne Cudia: I’m not going to count the first nine months that we met, because I was in that pseudo phase. But then when I decided enough is enough, I started eating, probably around I would say five months-ish. And then it was gradual. It wasn’t like one day I woke up and I was like “I want a lot less today.” It was just I got full quicker, and I stopped craving peanut butter. I was good on that for a little. I still eat it like every day now, but I took a bit of a break because I didn’t want it. It was very gradual.

And now, looking back, I’m like, I don’t know when it finally stopped. It wasn’t like, “Finally, now it’s done.” I just stopped thinking about it.

00:24:52

Her process of motivating herself to change

Chris Sandel: One of the things that I get asked most by people who are in the early stages and are really struggling with all the thoughts that come up is “How do you actually make a change?” So what was the process, or what did you do to get yourself to change and to make the changes that you needed to make as part of recovery?

Jayne Cudia: I think first, eating anything that’s out of your comfort zone. It can be one extra almond if that’s what’s out of your comfort zone. It’s pushing yourself the smallest bit that is still doable for you at that time. That’s first. I think the eating has to happen at whatever rate, but in some capacity, for you to then start understanding and putting other things that you learn into practice.

Yeah, I would say that, and then also you’re going to be very uncomfortable. With exercise, I remember a big thing with me was being uncomfortable not exercising. That was earth-shattering. I also couldn’t understand how you could be healthy and not exercise. But obviously getting rid of the eating disorder was the healthiest thing I could do for myself, but I didn’t understand. I was like, “Chris just wants me to be unhealthy. He’s out to get me.”

But just putting my trust into you, into the process, into my body, I guess that is my recommendation. Sometimes doing less is doing more, especially in recovery. That’s pretty much what it is. And just trusting and resisting the urge that you have, whether it’s to restrict, it’s to exercise, it’s to look at the scale, whatever. Just relax, learn some other coping skills, do those, and take it one day at a time, I guess.

Chris Sandel: Nice. I will just add, on the comment you made if you could just have one almond, have that almond – I’m reluctant to get behind that just because I think what happens when people make those tiny incremental changes with food, it can feel like “I’m putting in all of this effort” and you’re not actually going to get much upside from that, an extra almond or an extra apple or whatever. What can happen is you feel like “I’ve been trying this thing for months and months and it’s not getting me anywhere.” I’m all in favour of people need to go at a pace that is right for them, and in terms of changes with food, if it’s too small, you’re actually losing ground because of that and the extra anxiety that’s going on.

If I’m thinking about you, obviously we had to go at the pace that was right for you, but those first nine months could’ve been drastically shortened if you had made some bigger changes to start with. And that’s not me shaming you or anything along those lines; it’s just the reality of I think recovery takes so long for so many people not because it has to take that long, just more because of the changes that they are willing to make in those moments mean that it gets prolonged.

Jayne Cudia: Yeah, that is a really good point. That’s true. In my case, if I’m thinking about, I look at what I went through and I’m like, wow, that was actually really quick in the grand scheme of things. But you’re absolutely right. It didn’t need to take me nine months to say, “Okay, I’m ready to get rid of this. Now let me actually do what I’ve been avoiding.” So yeah, you’re absolutely right. I think it could even be more expedited.

But at the same time, the goal for I think so many people is “How fast can I get done with this and put it behind me?”, and it’s like, you can’t have that sort of mindset, like “Let me do everything super quick and have no eating disorder again next month.” It is going to take time. It’s that balance there, for sure.

00:28:51

How exercise changed for her during recovery

Chris Sandel: Yeah. In terms of the exercise piece – I know you talked about how much of a challenge that was – I’m trying to remember what happened in terms of your exercise while we were together. Was it a gradual thing that you reduced? Did you go cold turkey? What happened?

Jayne Cudia: I think I went cold turkey. I remember the conversation we had. I was annoyed. I was pretty bothered. [laughs] I thought you were out to get me. You were like, “Jayne, you really should not exercise at this point.” I think you were like, “It’s not going to help you.” You were just being real. “It’s not going to help you. You’re doing it for the wrong reasons.” It was all for aesthetics for me. The way I was exercising primarily was going to the gym and wearing tight clothing, looking at myself in the mirror. That’s the reason I was doing it.

So you were like, “That’s just the eating disorder. You shouldn’t do that.” And I was like, “Okay. I really want to, and I’m so annoyed that you say I shouldn’t. But let’s see what happens.” So I didn’t exercise for a long time, and then when I did, I think it was when I was going in that ‘fuck it’ approach, so about nine months in. I started doing hot yoga very intermittently. I really liked it, and it was great. It’s very important that it was something I hadn’t done before, so it was a new experience for me.

But then I was also training for a half-marathon, which I remember you were very leery about because I was at such a critical point. I was doing it with some friends who I had just met in grad school. They didn’t really know what I was going through, and I was trying to put up this “I’m fine, I don’t have an eating disorder” front. And I ended up doing it, and it was fine. But I remember even during that process, I was like, “Oh, Chris, I’m only running three times a week” and you were like, “So skip next week. Just show yourself you can skip next week.” I was like, “Oh God, okay. That’s a little uncomfortable.” But I did, and that was super important too, not being rigid.

But honestly, looking back, I think that was a bit soon for me to start training for something, so I probably wouldn’t recommend that.

Chris Sandel: Just to clarify, though, by the time that started, you were a fair way along in your recovery. This was not in the early stages. It was at a point where you were much more in a maintenance phase with your recovery. But yeah, I remember that conversation as well, and me saying, “Look, you have to keep proving to yourself that you’re the one in the driver’s seat. If you want to do the half-marathon, fine. I can’t stop you doing this. But you need to keep proving to yourself that you can take time off, so take this week off, and then next week go for one run or two runs. The week after that, take another week off.”

And I know you did reduce your training a lot based on those recommendations, and then once the marathon was over – I don’t know if you went back to running. At least it was a good thing to really show you were actually in the driver’s seat at that stage.

Jayne Cudia: Exactly, and that is a key point. I did the half-marathon. I wanted to do it with my friends. And then it was done and I was like, “Perfect, I’m done with running. I have no desire to do it again” as opposed to if I kept it up and it was like, “Where is that coming from? Could it be a potential red flag?” But yeah, for me I think it was fine. And you’re right, I was way further along.

So I did the hot yoga and stuff, and that wasn’t super consistent. And then maybe towards the end of that five-ish month period of having that extreme hunger and really being in that maintenance phase is when I had picked that up. But still, not necessarily recommending that for other people. Everyone’s journey with exercise and stuff is going to be different.

Chris Sandel: Yeah. And I would also add that since then, your relationship with exercise has been very relaxed. It’s been very much about what sounds like fun. You can talk a little more about this.

Jayne Cudia: Yeah. I also got into a new relationship during all of this, which added another fun layer. My partner is very supportive. I think he helped me during this, definitely.

But anyway, he had introduced me to snowboarding; I took up snowboarding with him in the winter, and that’s exercise, but to me it’s not. I don’t think of it that way. I also started rollerblading. But very infrequently, inconsistently. I’m not like “I have to rollerblade every week.” I’m like, “Okay, I learned how to do it. It’s fun.” I haven’t done it since the summer because there’s no point for me in the cold. Exercise is very chill for me even now, and that’s really nice. It’s a really good feeling.

00:33:58

How she dealt with uncomfortable feelings during recovery

Chris Sandel: Nice. What about the eating disorder thoughts or the uncomfortable emotions or sensations? How did you deal with these throughout the process?

Jayne Cudia: I guess the biggest thing would be finding coping mechanisms that are healthy. So not restricting. Leaning on new things. Like I started journalling more. I really got in touch with my spirituality. But I did take that a bit and become a little rigid with it in the beginning, actually. I remember like “I have to meditate every day” and that became a little weird. Like, you’re okay if you don’t. So I had to find a balance there. But that did help me, though, when I could use it as a tool when I wasn’t feeling well or first thing in the morning to start my day. There were benefits, and that was helpful for me.

But also just talking to my sister, to my supportive partner, doing things like that, and also learning how to sit with uncomfortable emotions. I could journal, I could listen to a podcast, go for a walk, and still not feel good, and that’s okay. Tomorrow is a new day, and maybe I’ll feel better tomorrow. Maybe I won’t. But then there’ll be another day after that. Just being at peace with emotions.

And I know you recommended some helpful books on that and stuff, and that really helped. That’s something that I think I didn’t have any awareness of before the eating disorder or before recovery. I had no sense of it’s okay to be unhappy. I was the firm believer that you have to be happy all the time. There was work to be done there, too.

But yeah, just sitting with the uncomfortable emotions and also using resources that I now had in my toolbox like journalling, meditating, those things.

00:35:58

Why she became a dietitian during recovery

Chris Sandel: Nice. One of the other things that happened while working together and also during your recovery was that you started being a dietitian or started studying as a dietitian. Talk a bit about this.

Jayne Cudia: Yes. I knew this was coming. [laughs] Right after our first session, probably, I was like, “Okay, Chris is so smart. He’s helping me. This is amazing work he’s doing. I’m so impressed.” I also had just graduated with a biology degree and didn’t really know what I was doing with that.

It was kind of the perfect timing in my life to be like, wow, okay, I just want to be a nutritionist and help people with eating disorders. And that’s great and it came from a great place, heartfelt, but I was also currently living with an active eating disorder. There was no separation in timeline. It wasn’t like I was looking back and was like, “That was a great experience. Now I want to do that too.” I was in it. But I also didn’t want to wait because I really had nothing going for me at that time. It was like, now’s the time in terms of my schooling and before I get a career and everything. So it was interesting timing.

I remember talking to you, and it was right after we had just met, and I clearly had a raging eating disorder going on, and you were like, “Are you sure? I don’t know. A lot of people with eating disorders get careers in food and whatever. Are you sure?” But also, obviously, you weren’t going to say “You can’t do this.” I appreciated the support that you did give me.

I still had the eating disorder, so it was a bit interesting, but I will say my programme was very, very, very weight-inclusive, Health at Every Size. I was very fortunate to be in a programme that was so progressive in their nutrition and dietetics that I didn’t feel like I really learned about weight loss at all. And that is remarkable. Especially the friends that I met and – it was best case scenario for me. I think it would’ve gone wrong, for sure, if it had been a different style of dietetics. So I really lucked out.

It was a lot, though. When I was recovering, I was in nutrition class all day and then would come home and struggle with eating. It was a lot of food and stuff. Yeah, at points I was sick of it, but it all worked out very well for me now. But it was a messy situation at points.

Chris Sandel: I’m glad that you got into the programme that you did. I’ve referenced you anonymously at various points on the podcast when talking to other guests about different things that you had come up in your programme. When I’m thinking about, where is dietetics heading? Is it heading in a good direction or a not-so-good direction? – thinking about your programme would always make me feel really positive about the situation.

I remember you sharing different things with me from it about different people who’d come in to talk. I think even some of the people I’ve had on my podcast came and chatted as part of your course. So it was a really positive thing that you got to go to that type of a programme, because that is definitely not the norm.

Jayne Cudia: Exactly. It’s definitely not the norm. The profession itself, unfortunately there’s a lot of eating disorders in the profession because talking about all this stuff, people gravitate towards that. I was fortunate to be in that programme and to be surrounded by people who, for the most part, or at least my close circle, had a seemingly positive relationship with food and their bodies and stuff. That was best case scenario for me. But it was definitely a risk because it could’ve gone a not-so-great way. But thankfully it went well, and it actually at points even supported what I was talking about with you and my recovery.

Chris Sandel: Yeah, it was good. It was really good.

00:40:25

What Jayne’s relationship with her body is like now

In terms of your relationship with your body, it sounded like before the eating disorder started it was fairly good or normal or neutral. It obviously went haywire as part of getting the eating disorder. Where are you at now?

Jayne Cudia: I would say I’m back to where I was before, but probably even a bit better. I think before I was extremely neutral. I was just typical or whatever you want to call it. Food didn’t dominate my thoughts. I had fine body image. I wasn’t devastated by how I looked in the mirror. I was neutral. And now I just don’t think about it. I guess if I do have a glimpse of myself or whatever it is, it’s definitely not negative.

It’s funny because usually what happens for some people, what happened for me, was that I started at a weight that was comfortable for my body, and then I had lost weight, gained weight, and now I’m somewhere a bit higher than where I had started this whole thing. And that’s because my body now feels more comfortable up here, and it’s not much of a difference. But either way, I feel like my confidence and my body image and everything is way better than it had ever been, even though now I’m at a weight where, if you would’ve told me during my eating disorder I would be at this weight, I would be crying and be like, “No way, I can’t do it.”

So it is interesting, because body image really is psychological, and it’s not about what you actually look like or what your actual weight is. It’s cool to be in this place. But yeah, on a day-to-day basis, I’m not concerned. It doesn’t even really cross my mind, honestly.

Chris Sandel: Nice. It’s awesome that you’re back in that place, and as you say, even better than you were before. How long do you feel like it took to get to that place? Did it feel like body image was one of the latter things to improve?

Jayne Cudia: I think it coincided with when I went all-in with eating, because I really approached that from a place of like “It doesn’t matter what I look like. I will do anything to get rid of this eating disorder. I don’t care how much weight I gain.” So I think it coincided with that, almost. But it was gradual, like everything in this process. It wasn’t like I woke up one day with amazing body image.

Chris Sandel: With the process and what you went through, was it what you expected, or was it different in some way?

Jayne Cudia: I really didn’t know what to expect. At that point, I was so in it, so much – it consumed my entire life – that I hoped I could just not be consumed by it. I guess I couldn’t even imagine that I would get to this place where it’s like none of this ever happened. I feel like so many people talk about how people have eating disorders for life, and it’s hard to change your brain and go back. But it’s definitely possible, clearly. It happened to me pretty quickly in the grand scheme of life. So I had no idea I would be in this place. I just hoped I would be a little bit better than where I was.

00:44:02

What she would tell her eating disorder self

Chris Sandel: In terms of things that you wish you had known back when you were in recovery, is there anything that if you could tell your eating disorder self, “I want to share this with you”, what would be that thing?

Jayne Cudia: I think it would be maybe what we talked about earlier, which is just do it sooner. I didn’t need to wait those months of trying to gain – I wasn’t all-in. Just do it. If you’re committing to this, just go for it. The sooner you go for it, the sooner the snowball gets rolling. And I know it’s scary, but your life will go on. The world will still spin. And you’ll see that it doesn’t matter as much as you think it does. How much you weigh, what you look like, it really doesn’t.

That’s the advice I would give. Just go for it, and you’ll see. And there’s more important things that you will want to care about.

Chris Sandel: I’m in full support of that. The action-taking piece is so much what I focus on, and I think so often people spend a long time – and a long time could be decades – in this stage of thinking about things, wanting more information, wanting to know how it’s all going to end before they even get started, and all of this pre-contemplation, with the hope of “If I think about this long enough, I can figure this out and then I’ll feel super comfortable, and then I’ll get started.” And that never happens. It’s through taking action that you start to notice the changes and the positive changes. It doesn’t happen beforehand. So yeah, I totally agree with you.

Jayne Cudia: Exactly. And I guess just advice I would give to somebody who hasn’t started recovery is please reach out to somebody. I knew I couldn’t do it by myself. There’s literally no way you can tease things out and just eat normally and have no eating disorder. You need support, and that’s why people like Chris are here. So definitely get help.

Chris Sandel: Nice. Is there anything we haven’t gone through that you want to mention? I feel like we’ve covered a lot, but is there anything you wish I’d asked you that I haven’t?

Jayne Cudia: No, I think this was great. Is there anything else that you think I should share?

Chris Sandel: I just want to add – because I said before, obviously, that there was this nine-month period that could’ve been sped up. Yes, in an absolute ideal world, if we’re scripting recovery, I would say that is true. And I also want to say that your recovery in the whole scheme of things was pretty quick, and that’s probably connected to the fact that, one, it hadn’t been going on for that long in the whole scheme of things, but two, you were taking action.

And even in that early nine-month period, you were still making changes. Your eating was still increasing. Your movement was still decreasing. You were making changes, and decent enough changes to your energy balance and the energy debt so that there were improvements that were occurring. And yes, you did need something more significant to come along and really get you to a place of full recovery, but why you were able to recover in the way that you did was because you were taking action, and you were making changes.

That is definitely one of the things that I remember about our work together. Yeah, there were sessions that there were tears and there was “This is so hard and so difficult, and I wish it was a different way. Why do I have to do this?” and all of those things – and yet you were still able to make changes. I think that’s a really important thing. It’s a testament to why you’ve been able to recover.

Jayne Cudia: Thank you. Yeah, and I think looking back, it does show me – and it probably shows everyone who’s gone through this – that there is so much that you can do. Just by taking action, you can change your brain. You can change the way you operate, get rid of this disease that you have. I’m proud of it, and it’s definitely empowering and shows me that there’s so much I can do.

Chris Sandel: Definitely. Thank you so much for coming on today and sharing your story. It’s amazing.

Jayne Cudia: Thank you so much, Chris.

Chris Sandel: So that was my interview with Jayne. I hope it was inspiring and helped you see and feel what is possible. As I said in the intro, I truly believe that full recovery is something that is possible for everyone, and I hope there were some good insights and some helpful bits that you took from this interview.

As I mentioned right at the top, right now I’m doing a free 3-part live training series. To sign up, you can go to the show notes at www.seven-health.com/290, and you’ll see the link there to register.

That is it for this episode. I will catch you again soon.

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