Episode 128: Welcome to another installment of Real Health Radio. This week I’m sitting down one of my past clients, Alex, to talk about what it’s been like working together.
Alex had been dieting for almost 20 years when we started working together, and we chat about what inspired her to work with me, what we worked on, and the changes she’s seen in her life.
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Chris Sandel: Welcome to Episode 128 of Real Health Radio. You can find the links talked about as part of this episode at the show notes, which is www.seven-health.com/128.
Welcome to Real Health Radio, health advice that’s more than just about how you look. And here’s your host, Chris Sandel.
Hey, guys. Thanks for joining me for another episode of Real Health Radio. A couple of weeks ago, I released an episode where I was chatting with Rachel, a past client of mine. I have to say, this podcast was really well received. I got lots of great feedback from it. So many people could resonate with her story and were inspired by the changes that she’s made, but also her ability to articulate these shifts in her behaviour and thinking. If you haven’t listened to that episode, I really implore you to do so and go back and check it out.
Today I have another episode where I’m chatting with a past client. This time around, it is Alex, and she’s a client I’ve just finished working with. Alex is someone who was a career dieter. She mentions in our chat her dieting history stretched over 15 or 20 years. Thoughts about food and her body were a constant and really inflicted damage in all areas of her life – creating physical symptoms like insomnia and poor digestion, psychological symptoms like panic attacks and anxiety, and just more general life symptoms, impinging on her ability to be present in social situations and to be able to eat in social situations, or being able to play with her two-year-old son.
Over the space of five months, all of that has changed. I’m going to let Alex tell you her story about this.
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Part of the reason I’m releasing this podcast now is because I’m currently taking on clients again. A large percentage of the clients I work with are similar to Alex. They’re on and off diets for decades, often, with little success and increasing problems.
If you hear yourself in Alex’s words or experiences, then I’d love to have a chat and see if we could change this. As you’ll hear, Alex’s life is now completely different compared to where it was when we started together.
If you are interested in working together or simply finding out more about it, you can head over to www.seven-health.com/help, and there you can read more about how I work with clients, and you can also then apply for a free initial chat.
With that intro out of the way, let’s get on with today’s show. Here is my conversation with my past client, Alex.
Hye, Alex. Thanks for joining me on the call today.
Alex: Hi.
Chris Sandel: To start with, why don’t you explain a little about your background and why you first got in contact with me?
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Alex: I’ve had a long-term history of dieting, probably the last 15 to 20 years. Various diets, restricted eating, which has been on and off over the last 15 to 20 years, but just in the last couple of years it got particularly bad. I was on very low calorie diets, periods of that followed by periods of binge eating. It then started to affect my physical and mental health. My periods stopped; I had insomnia constantly. Mentally, I gained more and more anxiety and started having panic attacks as well. I just got to the point that I felt like I needed to take some action to stop the cycle, essentially.
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Chris Sandel: With dealing with this, was there hesitancy in contacting me? How long had you been thinking about doing something about this?
Alex: I was always looking for what I could do next to try and help. I was always looking at how I could break the cycle and get out of it and have a healthy relationship with food.
I’d come across your book – I can’t quite remember where I’d seen it, but I actually read your book and really liked what you talked about. It really resonated with me, what was in there. But I think it was still a while later and I came across you again. I’d always said, all along, I felt like with problems with food, you need to look at both the biological, the eating side of things, but also the psychological. You need to look at those two together, and I hadn’t seen that anywhere else until I came across your work. That’s when I saw it and thought, this is actually something that could work well, where you can address those things together.
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Chris Sandel: Had you worked with other practitioners before me? And if so, what were they working on and how did that work out for you?
Alex: I’d worked with a variety of practitioners. I’d seen a dietitian who was very much about ‘you need to eat this at this meal and at these times’, which didn’t particularly work well for me coming from a restriction background. I felt it was too restrictive and I just ended up back in my old ways of eating and restricting, then binging again.
I’d also worked with a nutritionist, but again, that was very much about ‘cut this food out’, ‘cut that food out’, ‘eat at these certain times’. I think from the background I had, it didn’t work particularly well for me.
Actually, I had seen a counsellor around eating disorders as well, but again, that was very much about looking into my past, and I felt like it needed the two to come together, really, and work as one, which I hadn’t had.
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Chris Sandel: Do you want to describe a little bit of the process of us working together and what that experience looked like and felt like?
Alex: Definitely. I think we spoke every other week, and I felt that was a good space of time. As I described it, it was enough time for me to convince myself I was doing it wrong, to then speak to you again.
A lot of it was around looking at what I was eating, tuning in to how I was feeling, but then actually, it was about talking to you when thoughts came up about ‘Maybe I’m eating too much of X. Maybe I’m eating when I’m not hungry’, and it was having those discussions. You were able to bring out of me where those thoughts came from, where I’d got in my mind that this was right and this is how it should be. From that, we were able to come up with a better way of seeing things.
I found it quite hard at first, particularly around keeping a food diary. My first thought was like, ‘I don’t want to tell anybody what I’m eating or how much I’m eating. He’s going to be shocked and disgusted at it’. But actually, I felt we were able to work really well together. You were very reassuring, and through that we were able to have a good dialogue, have those questions.
I guess probably my other concern at first was it was going to be straight into the ‘don’t eat this and only eat at this time’, and actually there was no restriction at all through us working together through what I ate, and that really helped because I was able to find my own way through without getting into the cycles I’d gone into previously.
Chris Sandel: You used the term ‘we’ there a lot. The working together, did it feel like it was collaborative? Did it feel like we were working together, or it was me telling you what to do? How did you feel about all that?
Alex: Yeah, it definitely felt collaborative. On a day to day basis, I knew that if I had a question or I wasn’t sure about something, I could contact you. For all we spoke every other week, you were able to answer my emails in between those, and messages. So it definitely felt like a collaborative effort.
In the beginning I needed quite a bit of handholding because I wasn’t sure or I didn’t know if I was doing it right. I was worried, like ‘I can’t possibly be doing this right’. It really helped to have that person go along. Actually, towards the end of us working together, I think I probably contacted you less in between sessions because I felt like ‘Yes, I’ve got this. I know what I’m doing now’.
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Chris Sandel: Awesome. Then what are the improvements you’ve noticed working together? We’ll go through different aspects of that, but in terms of your health, how have different symptoms or how has your health improved since working together?
Alex: The big one for me has been my sleep, how much improved my sleep has been. I was just looking back the other day on my food diary from when I started, and I think about a week in I’d written in my food diary ‘Today I’m going to give myself permission to eat every time I feel hungry’. Not surprisingly, that night I slept through for the first time in about a year. I was totally stunned. But as you said when we spoke, that makes sense.
My sleep has continued to improve to the point now where I only tend to wake in the night if something external wakes me up, whereas before, to sleep through the night maybe literally happened once or twice a year, and that was a surprising event. Now that is the expected. That to me has been a real benefit and something I didn’t even know was possible for me, so that’s fantastic.
My periods have returned. Previously I had a gap where I had no period for a year and a half, and then it came back for a couple of cycles and disappeared again. Since working with you, it’s been regular for me, perhaps would be the best way of putting it. That’s been fantastic.
From an energy perspective, I’ve had a lot more energy. I’ve wanted to go out and go on walks. I’ve wanted to exercise. I’ve wanted to spend time with my family rather than it feeling like an effort to do so.
Also, I think mentally, health-wise, I’ve definitely felt calmer. I haven’t had any further panic attacks. My anxiety has been a lot lower. So in that respect, that’s been equally important to me as the physical side of things as well. So yeah, fantastic results.
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Chris Sandel: I know body image was a big part of why you came to see me. Where are you with this stuff now?
Alex: I think that was probably one of the hardest things I found at first. A couple of years ago when I lost a lot of weight, what I found was people at my work who I’d never spoken to before because I work in a big office were coming up to me and saying ‘Oh wow, you look amazing. Congratulations. Tell me the secret to your success’, that type of thing. To me, that was quite confusing because although I’d lost weight, I felt really unwell, really weak. Mentally, I was quite anxious.
I knew I needed to put on some weight to start feeling better again, but then my thoughts were like ‘What are people going to think of me?’ That’s what I found hard to begin with, around other people’s opinions about how they would perceive my weight gain. Would it be like ‘So-and-so’s a failure and she can’t even stick to a diet’ or whatever it is?
When we spoke, I realised personally, I didn’t have an issue with the way I looked at a bigger size or a smaller size. I was comfortable. It was more about how I felt within myself. Having those discussions was really helpful because I was able to put on the weight, reminding myself of how I felt. And now I feel like my mind’s probably caught up with my body and I feel far more comfortable with how I am now than I have been even at my lowest weight, where I was still quite obsessed with what I was looking like. So I’m definitely at a calmer place around body image.
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Chris Sandel: In terms of the food side of things, I know you chatted a little bit about the food log, but how has that changed over the time we worked together?
Alex: I think the biggest thing to me is that the mental chatter around food is gone. Before, it would be constant, daily, ‘What am I eating today? What am I allowed to eat? What am I not eating at the moment?’ If I was due to go out for a meal with family or colleagues, it would be ‘Right, I need to check the menu to see what I can eat’. There was so much chatter in my daily life, it didn’t leave a lot of space for other things.
And now that’s gone. I can wake up in the morning and the first thing I think about breakfast is actually when I walk into the kitchen and think ‘What am I going to eat now?’ It’s just totally different, and to a point I didn’t think was possible, having spent all of my adult life thinking about food, always having some kind of diet or restriction in place. This is the first time I’ve never had that.
As a result, I’ve found I don’t binge on foods like I used to because there is no restriction, and when there’s no restriction, there’s no reason to feel like ‘I’ve eaten something I shouldn’t, so I might as well eat as much of it as possible now because I know tomorrow I won’t be able to again’. That’s been fantastic.
I’ve also found when perhaps some of the old thought patterns arise, like ‘I need to get rid of this food because I’ll eat too much’, I’m able to talk through it. Through the work we’ve done together, I’ve got better thought patterns. So when the old thoughts come up, I can replace it with the newer thought patterns. Instead of the shouting voice, it’s more of a bit of a whisper now, which is far more easily manageable.
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Chris Sandel: What about the actual eating side? You talked there about the thinking around the eating; does it feel like you’re eating better or healthier than you were before, or you’re eating in a way that’s supporting your body? How do you think about the actual food?
Alex: I feel like I’m probably eating a balanced diet for the first time ever. I guess the whole thing around diets is restriction in some way, whether it’s a high fat low/ carbohydrate diet or it’s a low fat diet. Whereas now I’m having a bit of everything every day. If I’m particularly hungry one day, I feel like I can eat more. I don’t need to be thinking ‘I’ve hit my quota for today. I’ll just have to wait for tomorrow’ or think ‘I’ve blown it but I’ll start back on something else’.
It’s a lot more relaxed, my way of eating. I feel like I can eat what I want, but also, I feel able to make considered choices around ‘I could eat this, but I probably wouldn’t feel great after it. I’ll pick something else instead’. So I’m able to make those considered choices at the same time.
Chris Sandel: Which is really what Intuitive Eating is about. It’s not just listening to what your palate likes, but it’s also taking other variables into consideration and being able to do that without it feeling restrictive.
Alex: Yeah, definitely.
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Chris Sandel: What about your life overall? How has that shifted? What are some of the things maybe you’re able to do now that just weren’t achievable before?
Alex: That’s such a broad area. Because the focus is so much less on food now, there’s just more time for everything else. But at the same time, particularly around the thinking – for example, my social life is much improved because I’m not worrying about ‘What if people want to go out for drinks?’ and worried about the calories in the drink or ‘I can’t be having it because I’m on this particular diet at the moment’. I’m able to go out for lunches with work colleagues or out for a meal with friends of an evening.
One major thing for me is that I started taking dance classes. Before this, I hadn’t been confident enough in my body. I thought it was something I wouldn’t’ be able to do, whereas actually, through doing this process, it’s helped me realise that there’s more to life than worrying about what you look like and what other people think you look like. Actually, it’s about what makes you feel good. Dancing was always something I wanted to do, so I signed up and I’m taking weekly lessons, which is fantastic. Again, expanding my social circle, meeting people I wouldn’t have got to meet otherwise.
Another big thing is that I get to play with my son now. I’ve got a two-year-old son, and I think back to when I was eating hardly anything; he’d be at the park and I’d be sitting on a bench, feeling cold and weak, not wanting to join in, probably looking at what next meal plan I could go on or what I was going to eat or not eat for my dinner. Whereas now I’m getting involved at the park, going down the slides as well. It’s lovely to be more involved with him, which has been massive.
And then I know something we were talking about is most recently I’ve been on holiday with my family for the last two weeks, and there were 15 of us in a shared house. There was food everywhere. People were cooking meals. I had less control than ever about the environment in which I was in around food, and unbelievably for me, it just wasn’t an issue. If I wanted to eat something, I could. If other people were eating, I could either join in or not. Food became a thing where I could sit around and socialise, and it was fantastic. The anxiety wasn’t there. It has just meant that I can spend more time with family and friends and enjoy my life so much more.
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Chris Sandel: You mentioned a couple things there I’d like to touch on. In terms of the dance, how has your relationship with exercise or the way you think about exercise or movement changed?
Alex: That’s a really good point. I think I probably used to use exercise as – not quite a punishment, but it became like ‘I’ve eaten more today so I need to run more or go out for a long walk’. It was always a consequence, whereas now it’s far more about what I feel like doing. If I wake up and think ‘I want to go out for a walk’, I will do. If I wake up and think ‘I’d rather stay in today; the weathers’ been miserable, I’m not feeling great’, I don’t punish myself for not going out. It is just simply around what I fancy doing.
And something like dancing is something which I’ve wanted to do for such a long time. It’s such a joy to be able to go out and move my body and not be concerned about what I look like or how much of it I have to do. It’s just about going out there and enjoying myself.
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Chris Sandel: The other part was talking about eating in social situations, whether that be with family or with work. Were you the kind of person who would check menus before going out or be really anxious about ‘Oh God, I don’t know if I can do this meal with people’? What was your experience like before?
Alex: Yeah, absolutely. It would be to the point sometimes where if there was a work lunch planned, I’d be thinking ‘Maybe I’ll call in sick today because I can’t afford to eat that many calories’ or ‘There’s nothing on the menu I can eat’. I always checked the menu beforehand.
The worst one for me was where they’d give you a menu and they’d list the calories next to the meal, because at that point I just became lost. I couldn’t pick anything because I knew the calories in it. It was all wrong. I struggled to pick what I wanted to eat. I think that’s the best way of putting it. It wasn’t about what I wanted or what I fancied at the moment. It was just about what would have the least impact on me from a weight perspective.
But also, I became quite convinced at one point that all these different foods were affecting me digestively – which wasn’t the case. That was probably far more around the fact I wasn’t eating enough, and that was the issue. So yeah, I really struggled with that, and as a result never got to enjoy a meal. There was too much anxiety in the run-up and the eating of it.
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Chris Sandel: You touched on digestion there. How has that changed over the time working together?
Alex: That has been a lot better. As I say, I think part of my digestive problems were around having too long a gap between meals, perhaps. I had a lot of gas and bloating before, which I don’t have to the same level now. Or if there is a particular food I eat and I react to it in that way, I know I can comfortably not eat that food and it isn’t an issue. I don’t feel like I’m desperate to eat it because I’ve had to restrict it, because I’ve chosen not to eat it from a health perspective rather than from this concern about ‘I’ve been restricting so long, I need to eat X, Y and Z all the time now’.
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Chris Sandel: In society, it’s hard to escape from dieting chat and people talking about weight. How do those conversations affect you now versus what was going on before?
Alex: As you say, they do happen all the time, particularly at work or in social situations. I’ve found the best thing for me now is just to recognise them. Although I recognise them, it doesn’t affect me in the same way.
Before, if someone had eaten a chocolate bar and then started saying ‘I shouldn’t be doing this, I’m going to have to go back on a diet tomorrow’, my mind would immediately have thought ‘Oh yes, I shouldn’t be doing that either. What can I do to atone for this?’, whereas now I can hear it. If I’m eating the same thing, it’s like, that’s okay. This is what I’ve chosen to eat. I don’t need to vastly change what I’m doing as a result of eating this one chocolate bar. That’s fine.
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Chris Sandel: The last thing I want to ask is – part of the reason I’m doing this is I’m taking on new clients at the moment. What would you say to someone who is struggling with what you were dealing with, a career of dieting, going from one diet to the next? What advice would you have for them? I’m not asking you to say ‘yes, you have to work with Chris’, but just generally, is there anything you would suggest in terms of next steps?
Alex: What I would say is that the support is out there. Find somebody to work with, whoever that is. I tried going it alone for a long time using internet searches, and there’s just so much information out there on the web, often conflicting. It can drive you a bit crazy because one person’s telling you to do this, another person’s telling you to do this. It’s like everybody’s got the answer, but all the answers are different.
For me, the best thing I found is actually to work with somebody. Find somebody who you can trust and open up to you and tell how you feel, and you feel comfortable with what they’re coming back to you with as well. I’ve worked with people in the past who I felt quite close with, and you don’t get to have that dialogue. You don’t get to resolve things. For all you’re working together around the food side of things, it does get quite personal. It goes into past history, that side of things, and you want to feel comfortable with the person you’re working with.
So I’d say find someone to work with. Try it out, and if it doesn’t work, look somewhere else. Don’t get disheartened and think ‘Right, working with a nutritionist doesn’t work for me. I’ve tried it once; it didn’t work’. Get that support. Find that person who works for you.
Chris Sandel: Perfect. Thank you so much for coming on and for chatting about this stuff. I know I’m asking you to talk about very personal things, so I’m really appreciative of you being so open and sharing your story.
Alex: Thank you for having me and asking me to as well. I appreciate it.
Chris Sandel: I hope you got something out of that conversation with Alex. I hope it demonstrated the many areas that I work on with clients and also what’s possible to achieve if you want to make changes.
As I mentioned at the top of the show, I’m now taking on clients again. If you’re interested in working together or finding out more, you can head over to www.seven-health.com/help, and there you can read about how I work with clients and you can apply for the free initial chat so we can see if we’re a good fit for one another.
That is it for this week’s show. I’ll be back next week with a solo episode that I’m very excited about. Enjoy your week and I will catch you then.
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