Episode 311: Today on the show I'm talking with Becky Freestone, recovery coach and someone who fully recovered after 20+ years of living with an eating disorder. We cover Becky's recovery journey plus going all, dealing with weight gain, extreme hunger, mental hunger, going beyond where you thought you had to, and tips for getting started with your recovery.
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Chris Sandel: Hey. If you want access to the transcripts and the show notes and the links talked about as part of this episode, you can go to www.seven-health.com/311.
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 an eating disorder expert, and I help clients to fully recover.
Two announcements before we get on with today’s show. One, I’m taking on new clients at the moment. If you are someone who wants to reach a place of full recovery and would like support and guidance and help to get there, then I would love to support you in this way. You can send an email to info@seven-health.com, and if you just put ‘coaching’ in the subject line, I can send over the details of how we can work together.
The second thing is – and I actually mentioned this on last week’s episode – I’m now on Instagram in a fairly consistent way, and I’m genuinely getting into it. I have this love-hate relationship with Instagram or social media more generally. I haven’t been on social media for a very long time, and it’s really just been this year that I’ve got back into it a little bit, and really since August time that I’ve been doing it more. But I’m actually finding a way to do it where I enjoy it, and for me, a lot of the stuff that I put out through Instagram is like little mini blog posts, little mini nuggets of information.
I always had this mistaken belief that I wasn’t very good at Instagram and I wasn’t good at writing short posts, because so many of my podcasts are like two hours long, or when I do a blog post, it would always be this really long post. But I’ve figured out a way of doing short, punchy messages, and I’m really enjoying it. So if you’re not already following me on Instagram, then please head over. It’s @sevenhealthcompany, and there you can find all that. And we’ll put that in the show notes as well.
So, on with today’s show. Today is a guest interview, and I’m speaking with Becky Freestone. Becky struggled with anorexia and severe exercise compulsion for over 20 years, but has now made a full recovery. Since recovering, she’s become a recovery coach and has been doing this for five years. She has a YouTube channel with over 300 videos for those where coaching is not feasible. She finds joy in helping others find hope again and is so passionate about helping people who struggle with eating disorders know that they are not crazy and that they can absolutely fully recover.
She especially sees a need to speak to those with restrictive eating disorders who don’t fit the stereotypical body and feels that this is one of the biggest hindrances she runs into when trying to help someone. Her theory is if the symptoms are there, the treatment needs to be the same regardless of body size. Becky adamantly believes that full recovery is possible, and with the right tools and determination, freedom is within reach for anyone who wants it.
I have been aware of Becky for a really long time. She’s actually someone who’s been requested as a guest a lot by clients, by listeners, so this is well and truly overdue. As part of this conversation, I talk about Becky’s backstory, or we go through it and look at her eating disorder, her recovery, and what that’s looked like, and then we just go through some of the topics that are most interesting for people, most pressing for people, people are most confused about or most concerned about, and just talk about all these different aspects connected to recovery.
So without further ado, here is my conversation with Becky Freestone.
Hey, Becky. Thanks for coming on the show today.
Becky Freestone: Yeah, you bet. Thank you for asking me to come.
Chris Sandel: I’ve got to say, this is way, way, way overdue. You are someone who is frequently requested as a guest for me to have on the show, so I’m glad that we’re finally getting to do this. I think what would be useful is, one, to go through your story; the reason you’re a recovery coach and you do what you do is because of your own eating disorder, so I think it would be useful to go through that. And then I spent the morning going through all of your YouTube videos and looking at the things that are most liked, most watched, the topics that people want to hear about the most, and think that we can then have a discussion about all of those things.
Becky Freestone: That sounds good. Thank you again for having me on. I’m excited.
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Chris Sandel: Nice. I guess as a starting place, for anyone who doesn’t know who you are, do you want to just give a mini bio on who you are, what you do, what training you’ve done, that kind of thing?
Becky Freestone: Yes. I’m Becky Freestone. I had an eating disorder myself for about 20 years. I’m married and I have four kids, and I feel like I can say I was lucky enough to discover the approach that we’ll probably dive deeper into during this podcast. But I was lucky enough to find an approach to recovery that worked for me and that really made sense.
I had Tabitha Farrar as my recovery coach for a portion of my recovery, and just talking to someone that had personal experience was incredibly valuable to me, because up to that point I didn’t trust anyone – not my parents, who loved me and would’ve done anything and did do anything for me, not my husband, who’s an incredibly devoted, kind, good person. Didn’t trust him. I didn’t trust the people in my life that I should have trusted all along, but I did trust someone who’s speaking my language, who’s really inside of my head, who really understood it.
And as I talked to you, I know you did not have an eating disorder, but – and I said this before – I’m in awe; you’re spot on in the way that you describe people’s experience with an eating disorder. I’m amazed at how knowledgeable you are. And that doesn’t come natural for you; you are learning and researching and working with people and listening. So to me, that is – I didn’t do anything to have that other than deal with a crappy eating disorder, but you’ve put in the time and work to understand people that struggle with them.
Anyway, that’s how I became a coach. It just started out with, I don’t know, I guess there’s some interesting – I think I had done a couple YouTube videos. Tabitha and I were going to start a recovery centre before Covid. We had curriculum for it, we had a location for it, people had signed up for it. I found out I was pregnant and I was like, “How am I going to do this? I’m going to figure it out, I’m still going to make this work because I committed to it and we’re working to make sure this happens” and then Covid hit. All of Covid was devastating and so awful that people are dealing with the repercussions from it. But that was the deal. It was like, okay, we actually are not opening our centre.
Both of us changed to coaching and then the rest is history. Upon reflection, it’s like, maybe a centre would be – maybe I’d be in over my head, because I kind of feel like I’m drowning with four kids, and the coaching that I do now is a lot less that I did before. So if anyone wants to open a centre with me and do most of the legwork, I would love that. I definitely think there’s a need for it, but I’m unfortunately not, at least anytime in the near future for me.
But I love coaching. I’m passionate about it. I feel like still in some regards my job is pretty straight forward, but then also, I think because each person’s unique, the way in which I go about saying things is going to vary from person to person. What might help one person being said in a very stern, bold way, for another person, they might just need a confidence boost. They might be so hard on themselves that maybe they just need some confidence. Anyway, coaching has been wonderful.
I live in Utah. I enjoy skiing. Ski season is coming up here in just over a month, and I’m excited for that. My husband and I like to travel. We’re going to Portugal this week without our kids. We took them to the Netherlands this summer and it was a completely different experience. We took our kids to the Netherlands and also we visited Paris and Amsterdam. I went to Paris a couple years ago with just my husband and it was this great, dreamy, relaxing vacation, sitting at cafes and on our own schedule. It was great. Then two year slater we go and I have Hazel, who at the time just turned four, and I had her on a leash and I was so stressed out and I was like, oh my gosh, this is going to be a rare occasion that we take them out of the country again until they’re older.
But going with him, I’m really excited for that. And I attribute a lot of that excitement to being able to recover, like really genuinely having the freedom to do that, because before I wouldn’t have even considered it, shown any interest, would not have agreed to go, for obvious and multiple different reasons. I’m very grateful to be where I’m at right now and to be able to experience life in such a different way than I did for the many years previous that I struggled. Gives me a greater appreciation for life and just for everyday, mundane things.
Chris Sandel: Nice. Where in Portugal are you off to?
Becky Freestone: I honestly don’t even know, Chris. [laughs] I’m going with my siblings and their spouses and my parents. Zach is the planner. He does spreadsheets. I mean, he loves to do that, and I like to be surprised. So I just know we’re going somewhere in Portugal and I honestly don’t even know. I could look at the itinerary but I’m not.
Chris Sandel: Nice. One of my best friends lives in Portugal. He lives in Lisbon, so I’ve been out a number of times, and it’s such an awesome place. The food is incredible, the people are super friendly. It’s stunningly beautiful. The water is freezing, but if you get over that, great surf. I’ve been out many times to play golf because it’s got really good golf courses. But yeah, I highly recommend it. And for Europe, it’s fairly reasonably priced.
Becky Freestone: It’s very cheap, actually, looking at excursions and stuff. My husband’s like, “This is a great place to travel.” So we’ll see. I do know we are flying into Lisbon, so I know that much.
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Chris Sandel: Awesome. Let’s go back to focus a little bit on your early childhood and how that went into you ending up with an eating disorder. What was food like growing up in your household? What was your relationship like with food as a young kid?
Becky Freestone: That is a great question. I feel like I’ve talked about everything on my YouTube channel, but I have never talked about that, so I love that question. It actually made me think as you were asking, like actually, my childhood was great. I had a really great childhood. I have seven siblings. My youngest brother and sister both have Down syndrome and I feel like they, from a very young age, also helped me to keep things in perspective. I felt like they grounded me and they were this joy in our lives. I’m so grateful for them and I still feel that way. Great example of neither one of them have ever cared about what they look like or their body, and they’re the most confident people ever, and so loving and make everyone feel great. They’re very inspiring to me, and I love them. But that was a part of my childhood, growing up with a brother and sister with Down syndrome.
I had two very supportive parents, very involved but not overbearingly involved. We had very strict rules growing up. My faith has very high standards and expectations, and for me it was all I knew, and I knew that it was keeping me from doing dumb things in life and going down bad roads. I don’t know, I guess I was a mature kid for my age, because I was like, “Of course I would not drink in high school” or “Of course I would not date around if I wasn’t serious.” So for me, that was great. I’m grateful for that upbringing and having my morals and whatnot.
As far as eating goes and food, I did have a mother who probably, yes, had some disordered eating. Never was diagnosed with an eating disorder, but she would do Jenny Craig, Weightwatchers, all those things. As a kid, I would be like, “Why does she care so much? Literally get over it.” She’d weigh herself every morning and she’d be in a bad mood if she didn’t get to run. If she did run – as I’m speaking, I’m like, yeah, definitely eating disorder. But she still was able to take care of eight kids and high functioning and whatnot. But that was definitely the focus.
But interestingly enough, you’d think you’d probably have this orthorexic upbringing, right? Absolutely not. My mom never ate a fruit or vegetable. We would have mushy frozen cooked corn if we had a vegetable, or I don’t even know, very soggy overcooked broccoli with nothing on it. Fruit was like apple pie. She did not have hardly anything. I remember asking her as a kid, “Mom, could you put a fresh apple in my lunch for school? Other kids have oranges and apples. Could you just put a fresh apple in my lunch?” and that was a big thing that I was asking.
But we always had everything around. It was never that I had to ask for food. There were always candy bowls out. When friends would come, they always wanted to eat at our house because we had the best food. I didn’t think anything of it. I was like, this is just how we live. This is normal. So I had that environment where it was always there and it never felt off-limits. Maybe I didn’t put the connection together, “My mom’s really concerned about her weight, maybe I shouldn’t eat that.” I never really thought that way. I’d just eat freely.
I had a big appetite as a kid, and I never thought twice about what I ate. I thought my friends in high school that were on diets were dumb, it was so dumb that they would care about their weight so much that they wouldn’t go get burgers with us at lunchtime with all of our friends. I was very much very normal, healthy-minded, confident. Played volleyball. I was very comfortable and confident in my skin. Last person you’d have ever thought to have an eating disorder.
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Then I went to college; I played volleyball at Brigham Young University, a college here in the States. Within six months of my freshman year – and I do recall having that fear of the freshman 15 and people talking about that. Like, was it that bad? Everyone’s like, “Don’t get the freshman 15.” It just sounded like this terrible, awful thing. And I never really thought about my weight. And even that, I didn’t think “Oh okay, I have to be careful.”
But what happened is I just sort of – the stress of playing a college sport and trying to keep up with good grades – I was very disciplined and wanted to get straight As, and I had put so much pressure on myself to do everything well that food just fell in the background. It was an oversight. All of a sudden I was not having time for lunch and didn’t think anything of it because I was so stressed out and so busy, on top of practices before classes and practices in the afternoons.
So my deficit happened unintentionally, but then it started to happen intentionally. That’s when I started paying attention to what other girls were eating. Then all of a sudden, ironically enough, I found this interest and I’m like, “Why are all the girls eating salads? And why is no-one getting second, third, fourth plates of food?” Before my eating disorder, for a couple months I would sit with football players and we’d have eating contests. It was so hilarious. I honestly did not care at all. But again, as I unintentionally fell into deficit, you see the mindset shift. All of a sudden I cared what the girls were eating and I was trying to eat salads too, and I was thinking, “Gosh, maybe I don’t need to eat this. Why do I eat so much?” And all of a sudden I hated my body. It happened so fast for me. It really felt like when they talk about a switch. It went on and off.
Chris Sandel: How fast? When you say it happened fast, was it weeks, months? What is fast?
Becky Freestone: A couple of months. From the time I went to college end of August, September, maybe, to Christmas. When I came home for Christmas, it was like, my brain has been hijacked. It was really hard. My best friend watched things unfold, and she essentially lost the person she grew up with all through our school years and didn’t know what was going on. It really put such a strain on our friendship. Thinking back now, it must’ve been very hard for her to watch.
I remember being like, “I have no idea why I’m doing the things I’m doing, except now I have to. I just know that I have to get up in the dark and run before practice. I just know that I have to not eat the foods I used to eat.” It was just like something had taken over, and I had no control anymore. For me, that’s how quickly it happened.
Chris Sandel: At that point, were you recognising, “Oh, this is an issue and I need to deal with it”? Or it was more like “I was sucked in and it felt like this is what I have to do, and there isn’t really an alternative”? It wasn’t setting off red flags for you?
Becky Freestone: At the time, I knew that I felt different. My brain was different. But I also felt like at that point I did not understand what other people were seeing. I was just, I thought, ‘healthier’. I felt leaner. I’m now eating healthier food. Like, “None of this is bad. Why is everyone freaking out?”
I remember getting the diagnosis that I had anorexia nervosa, and my parents refused to accept it. They were like, “No she doesn’t.” Again, rightfully so. They knew me before I went to college as this totally very confident, healthy girl, and within months they’re like, “Your daughter has anorexia.” They’re like, “No she doesn’t. She has Celiac. She has this. Let’s test her for that. There’s no way that’s what’s happening.”
So I, of course, conveniently was like, “Yeah, that’s probably it too. I don’t have an eating disorder.” And I rolled with that. But deep down inside, in hindsight, I knew something was up. I knew I wasn’t eating enough. I knew I was working out a ton. I still didn’t think, though, that I looked like someone who had an eating disorder. Which is irrelevant. We all know that and probably talk more about that. But at the time, that was a thing that I used to keep me in denial, essentially, that there was something going on.
That ended up unfolding over the course of two seasons where I became a medical liability and I was asked to step out for a year in volleyball. I could take a medical scholarship and just be done with volleyball and they’ll pay for the rest of my college, or I could take a year off and try to recover, get better, and then get back. I remember being absolutely mortified. That was my entire identity. Everyone just knew me as “Becky plays volleyball.” My parents, “Becky, she plays volleyball.” Volleyball, Becky just went together.
So when that fell apart – and that was my dream to get the scholarship to this school – when that started to fall apart and was taken from me, I wanted nothing to do with it. I said, “I’ll take the medical scholarship because I’ve found another lifestyle. Running and starving myself, I’m not willing to give this up. So I guess if I have to do what you want me to do to play volleyball, I won’t.” That’s how sucked in I had gotten.
Chris Sandel: And that’s the case for so many people. As life falls away and all of these things that used to be important to you disappear and become not important for you, rather than that being this pivotal moment where you’re like, “Right, this has to stop, this is insanity”, it’s “Right, I’m just holding on to the eating disorder with even more of a grip. This has now become my new thing. This is the most important thing.” That’s so hard to see. This thing that you are holding on to with a death grip is the death of you, is the death of the quality of life you used to have, and yet you’re holding on to it like it’s your saviour.
Becky Freestone: The problem, and why it’s so dangerous and very hard to treat, as you know, is you’re completely blindsided as it unfolds and takes residence in your brain, but then you’re also blinded in making any kinds of decisions or pursuing any kinds of values or goals or dreams that you had – again, as you say, just completely blinded from anything other than right here, right now.
I remember walking away from that and being like, “I’ll just be the most fit person. Nobody on campus will see me and not see that I’m taking my health serious.” Thinking back, it’s like, how sad, insecure, lost I was – but that was my identity. “Fine, I won’t play volleyball, but I will be ripped and I’ll be zero body fat percentage. That is what I’m going to pursue now.” It was just this very unfulfilling giant waste of time. Now I can say that easily, where I’m sitting now. But if you’re in that spot, I totally understand that this feels like everything to you. Everything is on the line, and losing this could be very damaging or threatening to your life, when in fact the thing itself is what’s completely robbing you or life.
I remember calling my mom after having a meeting with the coaches and I told her, “Mom, I can’t play volleyball anymore.” I told her my options and I told her I said I’d walk away. She’s like, “You’ll regret that decision the rest of your life.” And that stuck with me. That I think perpetuated and kept me stuck in that place of like “I’m such a failure. I can’t believe that happened.” And again, just overcompensating in this area of fitness and health. What I thought was health.
Chris Sandel: Yeah, because you double down. It’s like the committed fallacy. Like, “I’m doubling down. I’m going to prove to everyone that this wasn’t a mistake by going this other route.”
Becky Freestone: Yep, totally, and try to prove that I was so happy and it was so fulfilling, and at the same time I’m losing friendships and my siblings didn’t want to talk to me, couldn’t stand being around me. I knew they talked about me behind my back and were like, “Becky is absolutely terrible to be around.” I know I was. And as I felt more and more isolated – because, again, I was not fun to be around – I went deeper and deeper and deeper until really that’s all I had.
And I work with clients like that, where they’re so isolated, they’re so alone. “I have no friends in life.” They’re 50, 60. No family connections, nothing, because it’s taken all of that away and the family removes themselves from it, feeling helpless.
Anyway, years went on. I finished college, met my husband when I was in a better state. Essentially, to wrap this up – we don’t need to go on forever – in the course of 20 years, I was up and down, up and down. I had no idea what rewiring was. When I say up and down, I mean my weight. My weight went up and maybe I was functioning at a slightly higher place where I could connect a little bit more. Still very much on meal plans, still very much exercising, all these things that I didn’t understand needed to be addressed.
So when I met my husband, I was in what I considered a better place, and then shortly after we got married, I hit the most rock bottom I’d ever been. It was a huge life shift for me. Obviously, marriage – especially, we had not lived together before, so this was a completely new experience for both of us. I did inpatient at one point after a miscarriage and just kept trying therapist after therapist, dietitian after dietitian. So much money and time and hope was poured into really quite futile efforts, because they were things that really got me nowhere. But if I was talking to a therapist and dietitian weekly, I was working on recovery. So I continued doing that.
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Chris Sandel: Let’s pause there for a sec, because I’d love for you to share, what were some of the things you did as part of that with either the therapist or with the dietitian that you think were a big mistake? Like “Please don’t waste your time on this because I don’t think it is valuable to be spending your time in this way”?
Becky Freestone: Also a very good question. One thing that was great about therapy was they very rarely talk about eating or food. It’s like, if you have an eating disorder, you don’t want someone telling you to eat more food, and you can say you’re in recovery because you’re talking to a therapist. It’s like, that’s a safe place for you. You can talk about your parents and the trauma they caused you. And though some people do experience trauma, trauma or not, I don’t think it’s related to eating more food and rewiring your brain when you have an eating disorder.
So the therapist or therapy that I had was, if nothing else, enabling and quite triggering. Because there would be talk about ensuring that they won’t let me get fat, making sure that I was prioritising my health. Things that are, oh my gosh, so damaging. Not even just a neutral position, but quite damaging. Not all, but some. My experiences.
And dietitians, I’d sit down in the first meeting and they’d go over the macronutrients, carbohydrate, protein, fat, and what each one did in my body, and what amounts I should have of each. In the beginning, I took that serious. I was like, “This is the way. I’ve got to learn more about this and that.” Probably the last 15 years, I was like, “This is all a load of crap and I know it’s not going to get me anywhere, but I don’t know what else to do.” So I’d sign up for another one and I’d get another meal plan and I’d get excited about new dietitians and then a different meal plan. It was, again, really unfortunately not helpful for me.
Chris Sandel: Because it just wasn’t enough food.
Becky Freestone: You need to eat so much food. Unrestricted eating and stop suppressing your body weight was not even a thing. If anything, it was the opposite. It was like, “Here’s a mela plan to make sure you don’t get out of control. You do need more food, but we don’t want you to eat so much that you’re having another issue.” That was talked about all the time. Even in treatment, I remember they got me to what they considered a healthy weight for me – which, by the way, is significantly under what I weigh now – I was discharged at that weight, and at the same time, they reduced my meal plan significantly.
Well, the meal plan, before they even reduced it, I was still starving. I was going to bed hungry every night. I felt incredibly restricted. Super messed up in my head because my brain hadn’t changed much at all but my body had. I’d gained a lot of weight in treatment. It was just a recipe – if you’re going to put weight on somebody and not address the rewiring, that doesn’t end well. Nobody’s staying there for years and years and years. Usually it’s just a quick slide right on back into the eating disorder. That’s why it’s so imperative to address the way that person thinks around food, body, and movement.
Chris Sandel: Totally. Otherwise, if you’re just in a bigger body and you have the same level of disordered thoughts, why are you there?
Becky Freestone: Right. It’s almost like revenge. It’s like, “You try that again, we’re going to grab even tighter.” It gets an even tighter grip on you, like “No way, no how will I ever go down that road again. That was terrible.” That was my experience after inpatient treatment.
Honestly, anyone who’s married to someone and stays married to someone with an eating disorder – don’t take offense to this if you’re listening and you have an eating disorder and you’re married, but seriously the person who’s living with you is an absolute saint. I am not as good of a person as he is, and he’s an absolute saint. I really think he was a huge part in my recovery when I finally recovered, because that last attempt at recovery, he actually was not involved at all.
I remember telling him, “I’m going to try this method.” He’s like, “I’ve been telling you to do that all along.” He has a medical background. He’s a physician, so I probably should’ve trusted him. He’s like, “That’s what I have been telling you forever, but I’m so glad you discovered this on your own. Good luck. Go for it.” And I would tell him about things I did or whatever, but I wasn’t calling him like, “Do you think I should do this?” I didn’t talk about any of that with him, and he knew within a week. He’s like, “Something’s different about you. You’re going to do this.” I’m like, “I am doing this.” He knew, this is happening. And I did not need his permission. It felt like I knew he loved me unconditionally, and this was for me. I wanted to recover.
The gift that I was able to give him through recovery was priceless. Being able to see him have his wife back is the happiest I’ve ever seen him. It was so awesome. So that I would say is probably one of the things that meant the most to me that I got out of recovery, was genuinely giving my husband a spouse that he can connect with and have experiences with. Anyway, that is my recovery and where I’m at now.
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Chris Sandel: Nice. If we do the very abridged version of what your recovery looked like, what was that? And I mean recovery in earnest, the last attempt that was the one that was actually meaningful and made this difference for you. What were the components of that?
Becky Freestone: What was different about that last attempt at recovery was I did things that I was never willing to do before. Like stop exercise completely. It was something that I had tried to go about over 100 different ways, but giving up exercise completely was not one of them because I just was unwilling to do that up to that point. So that was different. I went cold turkey.
One of the biggest differences was I felt like I had received permission, and when I heard someone speaking to my hunger and that that was normal, and that no wonder you want to feast day in and day out, all day long, all night long, because you’re really, really hungry, I was like, “Yeah, I am. I can’t believe someone else has felt that too and responded to it, and they’re still alive?” It was just this ‘aha’ moment.
So for me, understanding I could go way above that meal plan was highly motivating for me because I realised maybe in doing so, maybe I could get somewhere eventually. Because just staying on a meal plan, knowing that you’re not getting anywhere and you’re still restricting, it’s like, “Why on earth would I be willing to gain weight? Same brain in just a bigger body? I’m not doing that.” Because at that point, I was extremely afraid of weight gain. But when you’re actually eating everything that you want and you’re changing your brain, it’s like, “You know, maybe I am willing to at least explore that because I can see a way out.” So that was very good for me.
I stopped seeking permission. That was another huge one. Stop seeking permission to do what I knew I needed to do in recovery, which was rest and eat. To be super full, to go and get that pizza randomly at three o’clock in the afternoon because it sounded good and not having to tell anyone about it. I did not record my recovery. I did not put it out there on Instagram. I just was doing it for me. So that was a huge one for me.
I’ve had past clients who have Instagram accounts, or I have clients who talk about other people’s Instagram accounts, and though there might be some value in it, I would say focus all of your attention on recovering, and then get out online and help other people recover. It’s not linear. It’s up and down, it’s up and down. Highly triggering for people watching. That’s my two cents about it. If you’re in recovery, for multiple reasons, I think you focus on your recovery, get yourself in a really good place, and then help other people do the same.
Chris Sandel: I do definitely agree with you there. I think it makes it so much more difficult when you’re trying to do this as a form of content creation and having anyone who wants to know about it following you. And look, it’s not that there haven’t been people who have recovered in that vein, but I think it’s a real survivorship bias and you’re much more aware of the one or two or three people who’ve done that versus the many, many hundreds and thousands who’ve tried that and have failed miserably.
So yeah, I think you’re spot on. Don’t make this any harder than it needs to be. Recovery is already hard enough; why add another, more challenging thing on top of that that just doesn’t need to be there?
Becky Freestone: Right. And a huge variable. You don’t know what people are going to comment that could completely throw you over the edge. You’re not exactly emotionally incredibly stable when you’re in recovery. So putting yourself out there for trolls to attack you also is not helpful. For me, when I’m talking to somebody and they start a sentence with “So-and-so on Instagram” or “But this person on Instagram,” I’m literally like, “He, I don’t want to talk about it. I don’t have any idea who this person is or what they’re doing on Instagram, but you’ve got to focus on your own recovery. You don’t know what’s actually going on with this person who’s on Instagram that you think is doing it this way. You’ve tried that way before, remember? You tried that way, you tried that way. Remember how you didn’t get anywhere? You’re going to have to circle back.”
But that is something that is talked about more than I would like to have to talk about in a coaching session. I want to talk about, how are we going to be intentional here? What are we changing? How are we going to accomplish this thing that you’ve been really struggling with that’s holding you back? But conversations like that can be futile.
Okay, the last thing. I remember what you asked. I forgot where we were going and what question you’d asked.
The last thing I’ll say that was very different about recovery this last time was that I had a fire inside of me. I wasn’t at my rock bottom. It’s not like I hit rock bottom and was like on death’s door. But I was fed up of my eating disorder and I saw it was taking from my family and myself. What I told myself is, “At 300 pounds, I will reassess if I still don’t feel like I’ve rewired.” That was what I told myself. I thought that was probably a good window of weight to allow myself to feel like, “Okay, eat all that you want. Let’s test this theory. Let’s see if there’s actually systems in my body that can tell me, ‘You are now actually full’ and my brain shuts off because I don’t want more food. Is it even possible? I’m curious.”
I really just wanted to experiment, and I knew I was going to continue to pursue whatever approach I needed to. If I needed to shift or change things, I would, but I wasn’t going to stop until I had found and experienced that freedom. I wanted to live not afraid of weight. I wanted to wake up in the morning and be able to choose what I wanted to do and not be a slave to my eating disorder anymore.
So being willing, again, going back, to do things you’ve never been willing to do, but getting the greatest reward you’ve ever received in any attempt at recovery.
Chris Sandel: Awesome. And I think you had run the other experiment for 20 years. You knew that one. Like, let’s do another one, where you really do test it out for a significant either amount of time, or as you said, “Once I get to this weight” – which from where you started is a huge amount of weight for you to gain. It’s not that every person in recovery has to set that as the upper limit; it’s just for you, that seemed like, “Cool, that’s a good amount of room for me to run this experiment.”
Becky Freestone: Yeah, given my genetics and my history of having an eating disorder, I thought, that’s a fair window to put myself in. However, if you’re in a much larger body struggling with a restrictive eating disorder, please don’t hold on to that number and be like, “That’s the number she said.” No, I probably shouldn’t have even said that number. But my point was, give yourself 1,000 pounds – just some number where you’re like, “Okay, I am going to continue moving forward.”
One thing that I think really helped with my mindset, and I talk about this sometimes: if you were in a game against the entire world and huge money is on the line to see the person who can eat the most food – I don’t know, for six months, let’s say – what would you do different? Would you wait to eat breakfast until 10 in the morning? Would you be choosing the safer thing at a restaurant? You would optimise every waking moment, because there’s $5 billion on the line if you win this game. All of a sudden, everything you do, you’re finding solutions to things that we’re talking about in a session and you’re like “I really don’t know how to do this.” If that was on the line, I think you’d figure it out. You’d have that mindset. You’d have that goal of winning this. I think you would be able to do things you didn’t think you could do.
That shifts someone from a tentative, scared “Am I eating too much? I don’t know, I feel like I should weigh myself to make sure I’m not” or “I feel like I’m eating too much. Is this normal? Do other people eat” – it changes that entire mindset into this “I’m unstoppable. No-one can keep me from winning this. I can actually do this.” That’s like a visual – I very much like analogies and having something I can relate to that can help me feel, okay, yeah, that makes sense logically here, and then I can apply this to this person who’s in the eating disorder and now they’re talking logically about the disordered thoughts.
Chris Sandel: For sure. You said at the beginning, I’ve never had an eating disorder, but I did intentionally do this. There’s a podcast I put out a while ago of running an experiment where I did an overeating experiment to see what would happen if I really intentionally tried to eat a ton of food. And I knocked up against the same thing that you described there, like “I can’t get in the amount of energy that I need when I’m consuming more of these vegetables, so we’re removing that thing out.”
I changed everything about the way that I ate, and maybe the way that I did it would be different to someone in recovery, because I was knocking up against the fact that my body was telling me to not eat this amount of food. It was screaming at me, “Just stop.” So I’m like, okay, I’m going to find a way to force this in. And I did. I changed everything I ate to be able to do that. And if that’s your mentality, “I’m going to figure this thing out”, it’s amazing what you can change and how out-of-the-box you can get in terms of your thinking when that becomes the goal that you’re after.
Becky Freestone: Right. And usually what it does is highlights excuses. The more you do this, it’s highlighting these excuses that are like, “I can’t do it because of this” or “I didn’t have time because of that” or “Oh, I wanted to get this done before I had my meal” or all those things where it’s like, “Oh, but if this was on the line, actually, yeah, duh, obviously I’d prioritise eating.” That’s how I want you to see recovery. Prioritise recovery. This is a really big deal.
Chris Sandel: Yeah, because someone already knows how to do that. If we look at the disordered behaviours, it doesn’t matter what’s happened in your day; you found a way to go and do your exercise. You have figured out – house can be on fire and we’re still figuring out a way that I get out and do –
Becky Freestone: Running around the house that’s on fire. Yep.
Chris Sandel: I had this conversation with a client. Sometimes she’s at home, sometimes she’s travelling. She’s like, “It’s so up in the air. It can be so hard to keep up consistently with the recovery actions.” I’m like, “But you exercise every day when you’re away?” She’s like, “Yeah.” I was like, “Okay, so you find a way to make it to a gym every time you’re away because that’s a priority. So if you can do that, you can also do the recovery things. It’s just you’ve got to prioritise that in the same way.”
For most people listening, they know how to do this. It’s not that “I just couldn’t figure that out.” You do; it’s just prioritising a different thing.
Becky Freestone: And preparation. If this person’s like “I’m dead set on exercising every day” – clearly not really working on the exercise compulsion if they’re actually in recovery, but where there’s a will, there’s a way. Preparing, packing shoes, bringing an extra bag to put your workout clothes in, researching which places have gyms, where’s the closest gym – you’re putting a lot of time and effort into making sure that happens. How much time and effort are you putting into, like you said, making sure you have food available at all times, everywhere you’re going? That’s possible. Put a fanny pack around your waist and have it. So there’s never excuses.
So yeah, I think that’s something – mindset. You have to feel that shift, and when you feel it, it’s like, “This is happening. This is definitely happening and I’ll figure out a way to do it.”
Chris Sandel: I’m going to turn to the different topics that I think are really relevant, and I’m going to hit these in order of what gets asked the most or seems like the most important through to the things that are least important, just depending on how much we get through with time.
00:42:32
I think the idea or concept of going all-in seems to be a very big thing. I’m going to just ask a very general question, and then we can get into specifics afterwards. But tell me your thoughts on this concept of going all-in and what that looks like for you in your recovery, but also how you work on this in terms of your clients.
Becky Freestone: I’ll try to be more articulate here, because I’m long-winded and we only have an hour, so I’ll try to be short and sweet here.
In answer to this question, I think about you’re stranded on this island and you’re trying to get to shore, and it’s a swimmable distance. One person’s like, “Hey, point A to point B, I’m going to jump in and swim as fast as I can. It’s my best chance of getting to shore.” The other one’s like, “I’m going to jump in and tread water. Let’s see if I can just tread water all the way across. Just slow and steady, tread water.”
To me, I’m going to tire out. I’m going to be like, “Oh my gosh, that is very inefficient. Why would you do that? Just swim. Swim to shore.” To me, it’s the same thing as people who are going slow and steady – you are putting yourself in so much danger. You are putting yourself in a very vulnerable state where you’re poking at a bully. You’re poking at this eating disorder and then you’re backing down. It’s like, “Okay, I’m going to eat more. Oh my gosh, I’m going to restrict now. I’m going to compensate. I’m going to eat more, but I’m going to exercise.” It’s just aggravating your eating disorder.
When you’re doing that, guess what happens? You start reverting back to and acting out on the thoughts that you’re having, your disorder is generating. Whereas if you’re like, “Everything’s going. My entire day is being flipped upside down. It’s going to look completely different. I’m not allowing any of my decisions to be influenced by my eating disorder” –it’s amazing how quickly your brain will learn, “I am in control. My eating disorder is not me.” But when you’re playing on both teams, the eating disorder usually – always, actually – will win that game. Always.
So you have to pick a team and you cannot be trying this one foot in, one foot out, “Let me see how long I can tread water for.” It’s exhausting. It’s so exhausting.
If you’re doing the same thing you’ve done over and over and over again in recovery, hoping that something else is going to happen different this time, it’s not. You’re going to get the same result. We’ve all heard the definition of insanity, and essentially, that is what’s happening when someone continues to try to do the same thing over and over and over again.
So if you haven’t already tried all-in, I encourage you to try it. Because for me, when people truly are doing it and they’re really committed – extremely successful. Very, very high rates of success. Freedom, gratitude for themselves for doing it, excitement, back in life, feels fulfilled. So many wonderful things come when someone’s brave and pursues that, whereas when I see people with one foot in and one foot out, they’re not getting very far. In fact, they’re getting really frustrated.
Is it to be said that no-one can recover if they don’t go all-in? I can’t speak to that. I’ve never worked with anyone who’s been able to do that that didn’t go all-in. But I’m sure there’s someone out there. And also, what’s the definition of recovery for that person? What’s the definition of fully recovered for that person? For me, my definition changed over time. What I thought was recovered when I met my husband was not recovered. Being fully recovered is really not being influenced by that eating disorder anymore.
Chris Sandel: Yeah. A couple of things with that. I think, as you talked about, when you’ve got one foot in, one foot out, or “I do this recovery action and then I compensate in some way”, the reality is from a physiological standpoint, the eating disorder is driven by biology, as you talked about with your experience. Once you got into this energy debt, even though it was done in an unintentional way, this switch gets flipped and you think and feel and believe and perceive completely differently.
What happens is if you’re “I’m giving myself a little more food and then I’m doing my exercise”, you’re not actually changing the physiology in any meaningful way. You’re having this huge increase in your anxiety because it feels like “I’m taking this action”, but then you’re not seeing any upside from it. I think you do that long enough and you come to the conclusion, “Recovery doesn’t work for me. It’s too hard.”
So yeah, I’m definitely in agreement with you in terms of the going all-in because I think the more you’re then making those big changes, the more that you’re constantly reinforcing the idea of “Yeah, I can have these eating disorder thoughts, but I don’t need to act on them.” So I’m definitely of that opinion as well.
And look, I think with the all-in piece, sometimes people can inch their way up to it. I say ‘inch’ their way up to it meaning that they’re still making big changes to start with; it’s just that it’s not necessarily overnight that everything goes from zero to a hundred. I think definitely we can get to that place, but in terms of “Let me add in half an apple today and then next week I’m going to” – that definitely does not work.
Becky Freestone: Yeah, I would agree. Regularly doing it and just nailing it, where it’s like “I didn’t restrict once.” It takes a couple weeks to be hyper-aware of where it’s popping up. You’re usually not paying attention for recovery of like, “Oh, that’s disordered. I shouldn’t park that far away and walk into the store.” That’s just what you’re doing. That’s your life.
When you enter recovery and you’re really committed to all-in, there’s a learning curve, and there’s some time where you have to be like, “Wow, I didn’t realise how much this was influencing all these things” and you’re having to, each day – that’s why it’s is so important, the daily checking in with yourself – modify, change. “I’ve got to tweak this. I’ve got to do this. I need to change this” each day so that, again, maybe in a week or two at the most, you can see the light and see what needs to happen to be all-in. But yeah, I rarely have one 30-minute session with someone and they’re like, “Done. I’ve got it. I’m all-in and I’m not looking back.” Definitely there is a process there.
But the mindset of “I am doing this and I’m willing to learn from my mistakes and make changes and corrections” – that’s eventually how usually I’m seeing that go.
00:48:52
Chris Sandel: Nice. I know you talked about it somewhat already in terms of the weight gain piece, but when thinking about this, what are some of the things that come up most in terms of people’s challenges, or what are some of the analogies or ways that you guide people through this part?
Becky Freestone: I encourage people to make a rule for themselves that they cannot – when they’re focusing on rewiring, any word or any thought to do with weight gain is not allowed. So when weight gain pops in, you’re changing that to rewiring. It’s like, “Oh my gosh, I cannot believe how much I’ve been eating. I’m going to gain so much weight.” “Oh wait, I said the word ‘weight’, so I’m going to take that as my cue. I’m rewiring. I’m focusing on rewiring. I’m only allowed to focus on rewiring.”
Because if you’re trying to focus on rewiring and also trying to control your weight gain, you’re not going to be successful. Those two don’t go hand in hand. “What can I do right now to rewire? What have I done today that’s really solid rewiring?” You just start completely diving head-first into that focus on “What are my actions, my behaviours? What is going to help me get out of this fear that I have the fastest?”
So I think a lot of it is controlling those thoughts, and then also the big thing is not reacting to your emotions. Guilt, same, fear, regret, all of those things are going to lead to “Oh my gosh, I’m so big, I’ve gained so much weight, what am I doing? I need to fix this.” Uncomfortable emotion, fix. Uncomfortable emotion, fix.
When someone’s having an uncomfortable emotion – same thing as the thought process, these words, these buzzwords like ‘weight gain’ or ‘body’ or whatever over here, we translate that into rewiring. So when you have these emotions, you’re going to practise the skill of not trying to fix them. “That’s extremely uncomfortable. I really don’t like this feeling. ‘I’m crawling out of my skin. I really don’t like this feeling. I do not like this feeling like I just ate way too much and I want to get rid of it. I don’t like this feeling.”
Catching yourself from that thought to the action of being out on a walk or you deciding that you’re having a salad for dinner now – you’re catching the thought immediately when you feel the uncomfortable emotion. That’s your red flag. “This is very uncomfortable, and the reason is my brain is changing. I’ve wired my brain to think one way that thought I was safe, and now I have to teach my brain that actually, that wasn’t the right way to think. Actually, that wasn’t safe for me. Actually, that’s not good for me. So of course my brain’s changing, and that’s where those uncomfortable emotions are coming from.”
So much of this is going on in our head. If we can gain control of our thoughts and our emotions and detach them from our actions, you can be successful. Much easier said than done, but it is a skill that you can practise.
Chris Sandel: Totally, and I agree with you on all of that. For me, I use a lot of acceptance and commitment therapy. I think that can be really helpful in terms of creating that distance between yourself and your thoughts and recognising that thoughts are just thoughts, “Just because I had a thought, doesn’t mean that it’s true, doesn’t mean it’s a value of mine, doesn’t mean it’s something that is meaningful to me, doesn’t mean I need to give it attention.” So ways of being able to recognise that when those thoughts came up.
And then the same with the emotions piece. So often, when there are uncomfortable emotions, there is this instant knee-jerk reaction of “I’ve got to fix this. I’ve got to change it. I’ve got to put a cork in this. We need to have this go away” as opposed to, one, recognising “Hey, I can be with these emotions. I can create room for them to be here. I don’t have to do anything to get them to go away” – but two, “Can I use a level of discernment here to recognise, does this emotion feel appropriate for this situation?”
And one of the ways I think this can be really useful is: make it not about you. Like let’s imagine that your child, your son, your daughter, had a second sandwich at lunch. Would you want her to be feeling guilt and shame? Would you think that that is an appropriate emotion? And if she wasn’t feeling that, would you feel that she’s missing out, that that emotion should be there? And most people are like, “No, that’s definitely not what I want for them. I don’t want them to have that reaction.”
Okay, cool, if that’s the case for them, that’s also the case for you. So you can use the discernment of “I know this emotion is here, but it doesn’t make sense why this emotion is here. My brain is misfiring, and it’s misfiring because of being in an eating disorder.” It could be to do with cultural reasons or what we hear in diet culture and all that. But there can be a recognition of “This is misfiring for how I would want this to be for someone I truly love.” I think that’s a workaround, because so often it’s like, “Well, I wouldn’t want this for someone else, but it’s different for me.” It’s like, no, no, it’s not different for you.
Becky Freestone: Exactly. Totally, I agree. I think that’s a great tool to use, too. I think sometimes when you hear ‘ignore emotions’, that’s different from don’t react to them. You can acknowledge those emotions are there, but engaging in them and then trying to fix them is not going to be beneficial. Accepting them and being like, “This is a package deal that comes with rewiring, and I signed up for it, so we’re going to sit through this” is going to be much different than just pretending you don’t have those emotions. And essentially, that’s where you try to fix it. “I don’t want to feel this, I’m going to go, I’m going to go, I’m going to go.”
As far as weight gain, I feel like there’s different conversations in different stages of recovery. This is the last thing I’ll say about weight gain. What we’re talking about now is what I initially will talk about at the beginning.
When someone’s really scared of this initial weight and they thought “This should be over by now” – this is a really common thought – that’s where I start a little deeper into, “What would it even be like for you to be in the body that you, in the past, would’ve deemed as totally inappropriate, but what if you actually liked it? What if you were actually confident? What if people still liked you?” Just asking these questions, and it’s like, these are thoughts that have never even crossed their minds. Their brain has never even gone to these little corners of “Is that a possibility? I could do that?” These are things you can actually pursue, and it helps the person to, I think, in some ways change the beliefs that they had about what they thought they used to look like and what actually brought them happiness and joy and fulfilment in life, and redefining that.
So different conversations. Having that conversation in the first week of working with someone is not going to go great.
Chris Sandel: Yeah. I think as someone gets further along, there’s also been upsides that they’ve started to notice. I think what can happen in the beginning, it’s this fear of weight gain – it’s one, this very nebulous thing of “I just don’t know what’s going to happen”, but two, it feels like “I’m doing this thing, I’m putting on weight, and there’s nothing to show for it. There’s no upside whatsoever.”
Becky Freestone: That’s the worst. Those first few days are high anxiety. Very uncomfortable. Exhausting. It’s like, “What am I doing this for?”
Chris Sandel: But as someone gets further along, there can be the recognition of “Actually, I am more confident in work. I’m able to concentrate better. I’ve been having more freedom to be able to go out and do these meals. It feels weird to admit this, but it feels nice to not be exercising the way that I was.” So you can start to say, as you said, this is a package deal. You’re having that occur with all of this wrapped in because this is what needs to happen as part of the recovery process. So it’s like, yeah, you can not like certain aspects of this, and I get it, but I also think that there’s a lot of benefits you’re noticing with this.
And I think then the other piece I would say as well is I actually think there is something about going past where your expectations were that is really freeing.
Becky Freestone: That’s where the fear of weight gain goes away, at that place.
Chris Sandel: Totally. Because up until some point, you’re still holding on to something. There’s still the “Well, if I get the restriction, we can still just shoehorn it under this amount.” Once you go past the point of what you think is accessible, we’re not connected to any of that anymore. “I’m not trying to do that anymore because this has been blown out of the water.” I think most people think that’s going to be absolutely terrifying and where things go off the deep end, and actually that’s where the freedom really is. Because you’re like, “Now I’m not trying to hold on to anything.”
Becky Freestone: Absolutely. I have this big smile on my face because I remember that feeling. I remember being like, “I’m free! No-one’s commenting on my body anymore. I can have rolls and I don’t care!” It was this incredible freeing feeling. But I think had I not gone past the point you’re talking about, where I thought I should be, a place I never thought I’d ever go – because I was willing to go there and I was determined, because I knew my brain wasn’t right still and I kept going – literally that is where the trigger lies. That is where that freedom was.
So if you’re tiptoeing to this place of “This is it and then I cut it off”, it’s not going to happen. Again, the reason you’re cutting off is that fear of weight gain. You’ve got to run straight into that fear. And back to this package deal we’re talking about. You don’t get to custom or hand-pick this package. It’s not like you’re picking out a gift, “This and this I’ll put in the bag.” It just comes. It’s just done. The package is there, and you don’t get to pick “I want all the freedom and I don’t want to experience discomfort getting there.” Those two aren’t going to work. It’s like you sign up for it and you know those things are going to come, and just know you’ll get through them, and you’ll be so glad that you did.
Chris Sandel: I totally agree. Anything else on the weight gain piece or body image piece?
Becky Freestone: I think we could talk for hours on it and people would probably listen to that because it has to do with weight gain, but I think we should move on.
00:59:20
Chris Sandel: Cool. Then the next one is extreme hunger. I think this comes up a lot. There’s a lot of fear connected to this in the same way as there’s fear around weight gain. Again, I’m just going to start it open; what do you think people should know about extreme hunger?
Becky Freestone: Extreme hunger is going to make you feel like an absolute crazy person. When you lift the restrictions that you had and suddenly anything and everything is free to eat, it’s a scary feeling, but it’s also really fun if you allow it to be. If you’re determined to recover, you know these things have to be eaten, and these fears have to be overcome. It’s kind of fun. Honestly, it’s like, “Why would I not eat something I thought about? Why would I not have that thing? Yes, yes, yes.”
Basically it was a game of yes for me. Any time I saw food, I was saying yes – and genuinely I was like, “Yeah, I do want it.” That went on for months and months and months for me.
The physical extreme hunger, much shorter period for me. Much shorter. Maybe a couple of months, the physical. And then it was straight-up fullness with intense mental hunger for like 8 months, 10 months maybe. A very long period of “Oh man, I haven’t had a hunger signal in months.” I really was in a fed state for so long that I think I allowed – being in that fed state is when your brain is changing. Any time that you’re allowing yourself to dip back into that deficit, we’re having to do a lot of work to get ourselves back into that place where your brain is in a prime position to be able to learn to think a different way.
In one sense, extreme hunger will make you feel absolutely crazy and insane, but I f you’re doing it right, that’s how you should feel.
Chris Sandel: And I think as you said ,it can be this wonderful, freeing time. I know for many clients who are working, from a practical standpoint, that can be tough. Like, “I’m trying to do my job and then I’m trying to eat.” And I understand that. I think there are times where there are excuses around that and there are times where it’s legitimately hard to do this because of your job, and I totally do get that piece.
And I also think it’s so necessary. Your body is asking for this energy for a real, legitimate reason. For a very long time, depending on how long this has been going on – it could be a couple years, could be a couple of decades, like in your case – your body has not been getting what it needs, and there is a huge amount of debt that accrues because of that. There’s a huge amount of repair work that your body has been unable to do, organ systems being turned down and off – it’s crucial to have this energy come in to allow your body to repair.
I think one, people mistakenly think, “But I can’t need this much energy today.” It’s like, no, you don’t need this much energy today, but you need this much energy today plus the last two decades of restriction that has occurred.
But two, I think there’s this fear because of how often recovery is talked about that “At some point, I need to restrict again. I’m going to need to put the brakes on.” And I think this puts a lot of fear into people, one, of “How am I going to know when to put the brakes on?”, but two, there’s this fear of “I’m not going to do that extreme eating piece in the right way. I’m going to miss out on things.” I’ve had clients be in this huge dilemma around “I’m going to miss my window of doing it absolutely perfectly, because at some point of course I’m going to have to start doing restriction again.” It’s like, no, you don’t. That’s not where this ends. That’s not how it goes. But I think that’s a real worry for a lot of people, incorrectly, that then keeps them stuck.
Becky Freestone: Yeah. Majority of people gain weight without doing much rewiring, to be honest, in my experience. Really, the real rewiring comes when the weight is on, like we talked about, and you’re in a place that you never thought you’d be, and you’re still doing your recovery commitments and you’re still eating unrestrictedly. So if you’re in that place, you’re like, “Oh my gosh, I have not done this correctly. I have not rewired perfectly. I was not doing all these things and I gained this weight. Now what?” Well, now what is you continue perfecting that unrestricted eating for life mentality. You continue doing that.
I think also, when it comes to extreme hunger, I think it’s important to talk about – I’m not one that’s like, “Don’t talk about that, it’ll trigger them” or “Don’t talk about that; that will scare them from doing it.” Let’s just put it out there so you know what to expect. Often when you have extreme hunger, the first couple weeks we call it the honeymoon phase. It’s like, “This is incredible. My pants still fit me. I have not noticed any changes. I’m eating all this food. This is working! I love this!”
And then the weight comes on, and then those sessions are a little bit more filled with dread and fear and doubt, and everything about what they were doing changed only because their body is now changing. Even though they’re feeling life come back into them and they’re feeling this excitement about eating again, all of a sudden it’s like screeching on the brakes, “Oh my gosh, what is going on?”
So just know when you embark on recovery, unrestricted eating is going to cause your body to change because you’ve been restricting it. Just accepting that fact and knowing at some point that’s going to happen, whether it’s Day 1 or a month or two in – it’s going to happen, and you’ve got to gear up and prepare yourself to be like, “I’m following through. It’s going to happen and I’ve already made up my mind and I’m still going when that happens.” People get caught off-guard and have no tools in their belt, they have no way to handle it other than to react and run back.
Chris Sandel: And I think it’s important to understand the order of healing that the body takes. If I was designing a recovery and knowing what everyone’s fear is, I would design it in a completely different way, because it does make it really hard.
Becky Freestone: Oh, so hard.
Chris Sandel: In a lot of ways, after that honeymoon phase, if someone gets that, the body does prioritise weight gain, and prioritise weight gain around the abdomen, and that can be such a hard thing for people. And “Hey, I now feel like I’ve been hit by a bus when I’m doing this.” Yeah, there’s a lot of changes that take place in an order you don’t want to. And really, so much of the neural rewiring and the shifts in someone’s mind and perspective is in the latter stages. That sucks, because it is in a lot of ways a leap of faith for long periods, or for periods where “I’m noticing these glimmers or this little upside, but I’m still doing something that I’m deathly afraid of.”
But as you keep going, it does happen. It does change. The thing I always talk about is it’s not a ‘it might’. It’s like, no, if you do this, it will happen. I am so convinced –
Becky Freestone: There’s no way it won’t.
Chris Sandel: Full recovery will happen if you do these things.
Becky Freestone: Yeah. If you never listen to your eating disorder again, you won’t have an eating disorder. How will you have an eating disorder, how will you have those thoughts, if you haven’t acted on them in months and years? Why? Your brain is not stupid. It’s not going to keep throwing out thoughts you’re not responding to. So your brain does change.
I wanted to say one other thing. Initial weight gain will come on, not always, but often very fast. Like you said, around the abdomen. Really fast. My face looked like I got stung by a bee. For me, it got really puffy pretty fast. I know that people – and I did the same thing – this rate of weight gain in a week, 9 times out of 10, 10 times out of 10, that weight gain is going to be way more than you wanted it to be, I’ll be honest. If you’re doing it right.
But that rate of weight gain is something you don’t need to worry about. I don’t want you to pull back the extreme eating because you saw that huge shoot-up in your body over the course of a week or two. You’ve got to trust that by doing that, it’s how eventually you’re not going to want to eat 20,000 calories a day. The only way you’re ever going to not want to be doing that every day and actually have other interests in your life is to in fact buckle down and accept that extreme hunger and dive into it and just allow it to be. Don’t judge it.
Chris Sandel: Yeah. In the beginning, so much of it is water weight. There’s electrolytes. There’s lots of reasons why there’s this initial bump, even when someone hasn’t made a massive change. I think people get so into the calorie math of “I only put in this little extra and this has already happened, and if I extrapolate that out” – it’s like, you’re not an abacus. Your body does work in more complex ways than this.
Yeah, in the beginning, your body is prioritising weight gain really above all else, and then as you keep going, more of that is being used to do the repair work, because your body realises, “Okay, cool, this is continuing to come in.” But in the beginning – people always talk about, “I can’t trust my body”, and I’m like, “Can you demonstrate to your body that it is able to trust you as the person who is providing the energy or is choosing to go for a run or a walk or whatever it is?” How would your recovery change if you prioritised the idea of “I need to show my body unconditionally that it can trust me, and I’m going to do that for six months or a year and see where I end up and what is the feedback and the signals my body’s getting”? As opposed to “I need my body to constantly show me that it can be trusted before I make any first move.”
Becky Freestone: Totally. I think what happens when I get in a conversation with someone – no answer I give them about why their body needs it – there’s no convincing someone that they actually need that energy. No convincing. I’ve heard everything, and no matter what my response is, as logical as it is, it doesn’t sink in. So at that point I’m like, “Can we focus on rewiring? Because if we do that, you’re going to get somewhere. But nothing I’m going to say to you right now about weight gain is going to sit with you. You’re not going to accept it.”
Again, that tool back at the beginning of “Weight gain? Oh, we’re talking about that again. Remember, we’re going to shift back over to rewiring what we need to do to actually get our actions to get that to happen.”
Chris Sandel: Yeah, totally. I understand that so much of what we’re covering today for many people will just go in one ear and out the other because you’re not in a state that you’re able to hear it properly, or you’re not in a state where your mind and the eating disorder generate all of these counterarguments, “They don’t know what they’re talking about” or “That thing’s not true” or “That might’ve happened for Becky, but that’s not going to happen for me” – all of that is going to come up.
For me, my response is, you’ve run this other experiment. Let’s try this other way and see what happens. Maybe I’m wrong. But let’s run this experiment, and then we can both see what happens. I would prefer to talk about what happened and the realities of that as opposed to us both bandying about different theories of what we think is going to happen, because no-one’s going to win that game and you’re not going to get anywhere.
Becky Freestone: And your eating disorder will always have something to say about it, for sure. Absolutely.
01:11:15
Chris Sandel: I think then also connected to this idea of extreme hunger is conversations around mental hunger. What I often hear or see is people very much disregarding mental hunger, and “Unless I’ve got the most obvious punch-in-the-face physical symptoms that are telling me I’m hungry, it’s not real hunger. Yeah, I’ve thought about that food, but that doesn’t mean it’s real hunger.” So yeah, tell me your thoughts on mental hunger and how you have this conversation with people.
Becky Freestone: Mental hunger is what got me to recover. If you’re just giving yourself permission to eat when you feel physical hunger, again, you’re giving yourself, what, a week or a few months feeling that, and then if you’re not recovered, it didn’t work. You are going to feel physically full for a very good amount of your recovery while rewiring is still going on. that is going to be manifested through mental hunger.
Mental hunger is actually what’s carrying you through the process that it takes to fully rewire. No way, no how can someone have the mental hunger and physical hunger line up perfectly. It’s like, “Oh my gosh, I started feeling full and totally content and satisfied. I didn’t think about eating for hours.” It never works that way. It’s always like, “I’m full and I’m super disappointed and frustrated that I am because I still want to eat so much food. This isn’t working.” There’s a panic that goes on, and there’s this disconnect where your body’s not quite where it wants to be yet.
The reason it’s still asking you to eat more food even though it’s full is because it still needs it. And again, no-one’s going to believe that that’s listening to me. “It doesn’t need it. I already gained this much weight.” All the stuff that’s going to go on. When I say this, their eating disorder is going to snatch that thought and turn it around. So what I’m going to say to that person is: How is the rewiring going? Do you have any eating disorder thoughts anymore? Do you feel totally free? You still have fear of weight again, right?
Remember our goal was that. You hired me so we could rewire your brain. So why are we talking about the fact that it’s not fair that you still are thinking about food even though you’re full and you’ve gained weight?
Again, I feel like the only answer I’ve ever been able to come up with to all of these hard questions is if they’re experiencing any kind of emotions or actions, they cannot answer yes to that. They wouldn’t still be talking to me. Clearly, there are still things they need to work on, and that’s why that mental hunger is still driving them to do so.
To me, mental hunger is the most valuable hunger. It’s the most important one that you listen to. That’s your body’s way of trying to get you to trust it again.
Chris Sandel: I love that explanation and I love that way of reframing it. I think for a lot of people, there’s this hierarchy of “physical hunger is more important, mental hunger is not so much important or maybe that’s leading me to be an emotional eater” or all of those kinds of things. Mental hunger and physical hunger are both feedback from your body that “Hey, I need to eat and I need energy.”
Yeah, there can be situations where, as you talk about, you’re really full, but as I mentioned before, you can be really full because that’s the capacity of something in your stomach at that moment, but you have this huge energy debt that you need to pay off. So we still need more energy to come in.
And so often, your digestive system is still trying to catch up with the fact that there is more food coming in, and it hasn’t had the resources to be able to function properly. So there can be this lag between your body’s capacity and what you actually need, and the way to get past that is actually by bringing more food in.
Becky Freestone: Absolutely. Not to mention anxiety is a huge factor in fullness. I would say that’s the primary thing that people are running into problems with “Oh, I’m full.” It’s like, will you test that? If you had to, your life’s on the line, your kid’s life on the line, could you eat more? Just experiment with that, see what happens? And they do, and then all of a sudden they’re like, “That made me hungrier. Oh my gosh, what in the world?” They ploughed through that anxiety while they were eating, and all of a sudden they realise, that’s actually not fullness.
That heavy feeling in your stomach – I know what that feeling is. I used to have it all the time. I always had that feeling. So when you’re eating in recovery and eating slightly more, it’s like, “Whoa, I am so full.” Yes, there’s some things that are going on, and yes, there are high levels of food going in, but also there’s that anxiety piece. So remember, fullness is something that shouldn’t necessarily stop you. I’ve talked about where I would eat and eat and eat and eat and eat until I literally was like, “I have to lie down now for a little bit” and I would be frustrated at that and be frustrated about the fact that I had to lie down. But again, I had that mindset of “As soon as I can eat again, I’m going to eat. Soon as I get up again, I’m going to eat.”
Obviously, I won’t deny, does it feel better to eat when you feel some physical hunger? Yeah, it does. But unfortunately, again, recovery is a package. You don’t get to choose that. “I want to recover and only eat when I feel physical hunger.” That’s not going to get you very far. So unfortunately, you’re going to have to eat when you’re full. That’s the reality. You’re going to have to be doing it, and you’re going to have to be doing it over and over and over again.
Like you said, it’s in that space where your brain settles down, your body feels this new homeostasis, and you’re able to have thoughts outside of food. But if you’re unwilling to go through that phase, your brain’s still going to be scared there’s not enough food. So lots of uncomfortable things. I wish that you could wake up and feel totally not afraid of weight gain anymore and totally clear-headed and rewired and then do it.
But I always tell people, you don’t have to trust me. I’m some rando person on YouTube. You’ve never met me in person. You don’t have to trust me. You’re asking a lot of questions like you don’t trust me, though. Why are you following my channel? Why have you hired me as a coach? Something deep down inside of you knows this makes sense. Something that’s enough for you to continue to make comments or to continue to watch the videos. If I watch something that I totally disagree with and I just think is completely erroneous, I’m not following that channel. This is outside of eating disorders. Are you? Are you following stuff that you’re like, “This is bogus and this person has no idea what they’re talking about, but I think I’ll keep following them and watching their videos every day”?
There is a reason why you’re gravitating and listening and seeking out this information: because it makes sense. It’s really not rocket science. It makes really, really logical sense, but it can feel very difficult.
Chris Sandel: Yeah. I’m totally on board with that. I think it’s really highlighting there is something in you that is pulling you towards this, that is telling you “This is something I need to pay attention to.”
01:18:19
I think just coming back to something you said earlier, I use the analogy of recovery is like rehab. If you’ve been hit by a car and you’re needing to re-learn how to walk, that is what recovery is like. And you’re going to have to do things as part of that process that regular people don’t have to do. And yeah, it’s annoying that “I’m having to do these exercises that are excruciatingly painful to re-learn how to walk. I wish I could just walk.” I think for so many people, there’s this feeling of “I just want to be a normal eater. I just want to go from having an eating disorder for 20 years to just being like everyone else in the office who’s a regular eater.” It’s like, that’s just not possible. You’ve been hit by the car and you need to do the rehab.
So one, it means that there’s going to be things that are painful or uncomfortable that you have to do, but two, you’re going to have to do things that other people don’t have to do because they’re not going through the same thing that you’re doing. I think so often, the conversations around nutrition and health and all of that stuff that people get sucked into in recovery loses the context of the fact that you have an eating disorder. What you need to do is different to what some other people needs to do who doesn’t have an eating disorder. And what’s often recommended for that person, I also disagree with, but let’s just focus on your reality.
Becky Freestone: Right, I was going to say, half the time those people that you’re calling normal eaters or normal people are disordered eaters, too. But the difference between you and them is you’re trying to recover and they’re not. Whenever someone starts a sentence with ‘normal people’, we’ve got to get that out of our mindset because you’re not a normal person right now. You’re recovering from an eating disorder. The comparison thing is never going to be helpful, whether you’re comparing to someone who in fact is a normal, healthy-minded person or if it’s someone who’s disordered. Neither of those is you, because you’re someone with an eating disorder who is in recovery.
Chris Sandel: And I think the ‘normal person’ that people always refer to is typically the person who’s eating the least. When you go and meet someone who orders a double portion for lunch and then has dessert, are you referring to them as a normal person and saying “I need to do the exact same thing as them”?
Becky Freestone: Yeah, it shifts and bends as it’s convenient for the eating disorder’s agenda. I wish I was that ingenious in other aspects of my life, thinking on my feet like that. But man, my eating disorder was so good. It was just natural to spit out of my mouth. So you have to become aware, like, “Actually, this is a double standard” or “Actually, I can’t buy into those thoughts anymore.”
I have a few more minutes if you want to pick the things that might be most important to touch on.
01:21:28
Chris Sandel: There’s just really one final piece, and I think you’ve done a number of different videos on this, which is recovery tips for where to get started. You don’t have to remember every tip you’ve ever given connected to this, but what comes to mind if you were to say, “Okay cool, these are some things to get started with and run with” – and maybe things that we haven’t hit at this point? I think everything we’ve hit today is going to be relevant in some way to this, but whatever we hit that seems like it’s really useful.
Becky Freestone: We already touched on the mindset. That’s the first thing. I could give you several hundred things to set you up to recover, but if your mindset isn’t “I’m going to eat a lot more food than I’ve ever eaten in my life”, none of that’s going to do anything. With that being said, some things that I would say are setting yourself up for success in regard to your environment and your support system:
Let’s start with environment. Get all the safe foods out of your house. If an alcoholic’s trying to stop drinking, are they going to keep bottles of beer in the fridge and hope for success? It’s not going to work. So get those safe foods, the ones you gravitate to, the default foods, the ones you eat a lot of before you eat the challenging food – get them out of your house. It’ll be freeing. It’ll be scary; you’ll feel like I’m asking you to give away a child. But when you do that, it opens up like, “Wow, there’s some empty spaces here I need to fill with challenging food.”
And then the decision is a lot easier when it comes time to eat. “Oh, should I have the sweet potato or should I have the white bread? I really want white bread but the sweet potatoes are going to go bad.” It’s just gone. They’re gone, and they’re not haunting you anymore, and you don’t have to even worry about fitting them in your day. Just focus on hopefully a list you’ve made of all the foods you know you do need to challenge. Or maybe make a list of safe foods. That would probably be a list that could be effective as well, and just don’t have those in your house. Then everything else is stuff you need to challenge.
As far as exercise goes in environment, if you have a gym pass, obviously, discontinue it. If you have gym equipment and you can get it out of the house, do that. I think, though, if you can withstand having an exercise machine in your house – let’s say you walk by it every single day in recovery and you do cold turkey – that is some good rewiring. So I’m not opposed to allowing these triggers to be there and then saying “Absolutely not.”
I actually just remembered this as we were talking. We had a home gym, and I remember having these rows of weights stacked, and I remember I was cold turkey and it had been weeks, and I just really wanted to go lift. I was like, “You know what I’m going to do? I’m going to conquer this head-on. I’m going to sit in front of those weights and I’m just going to stare at them.” And I did. I sat right in front of them. I remember this. I was like, “Wow, have you guys had so much power over me. Oh my gosh, I can’t believe these pieces of rubber and metal have taken so much from my life. I cannot believe that I am like married to these weights.”
I just sat there, and I kept looking at them and looking at them. And it was incredible what happened. The urge and the “I have to” was repulsive. I did not want to. I was like, “Ooh, that does not sit well with me. I’m not touching those.” And just that exercise of being able to do that, mentally facing it head-on, was really helpful for me throughout recovery. I started associating those for that time while I was in recovery as something that really wasn’t actually bringing me happiness. But I had never actually sat down and just accepted, “These are not healthy for me right now. These are something that cannot be in my life right now.”
Similar to when my husband would go exercise. Some people would say, “Oh, your spouse can support you.” it’s like, actually, in real life, your spouse may exercise. You might choose not to. You’ve got to sit with that and be like, “It’s okay.” But in the initial stages, maybe you’re not quite at that place where setting yourself up with having these temptations out for a little bit would be a good thing. You know yourself and it’s obviously trial and error; if one method is not working, try another one.
In terms of support people, if you have people in your life that you’re like “I can tell them everything and anything and they’re super supportive and they’re a great, positive influence on me”, people you respect, people you know who have their heads screwed on straight, who have their values and priorities in place – if you know someone like that, talk to them, reach out to them, bring them in.
And if it’s someone you’re like, “I would never do that. I know them, I’m thinking about that person, but I would never call them. I don’t know them that well”, then think about, what are the attributes or characteristics you like about that person that make you feel that way about that person? When you think of someone you really respect, admire, all those things, think about, what are those things?
“They’re a great listener. They’re always there to help me. They’re willing to do anything” or “This person is a leader, they’re inspiring” – whatever it is, focus on, “That’s what I want for myself. I’m going to start trying to focus on and acquire these characteristics that I’ve never had within me.” You can’t. You can’t always be there to help someone when you have an eating disorder. No way. You can’t be a good listener. You’re thinking about cheeseburgers and pizza. There are so many things that when you actually are like, “I’m moving my disorder aside and I’m thinking about what I actually want in my life” that will come up, that will help you to feel that intrinsic drive, face recovery head-on and just go for it.
I think getting started – again, I’ve regurgitated the same information in all of my videos multiple times, but really it’s getting in that mindset and feeling unstoppable and really wanting it for yourself.
Chris Sandel: Nice. I think that’s great, and I do highly recommend that people go and watch your videos. I know you’ve done different versions of that same one many, many times.
I know you need to shoot off; thank you so much for this conversation. As I said at the start, long overdue. I’m glad we got to do it. Where can people go if they want to find out more about you?
Becky Freestone: Really just my YouTube channel. I have a coaching website. You asked about my training at the beginning; I don’t have any training, and I’m very open about that. People have asked, “Do you have any kind of coaching certificate?” No, I don’t. I feel like that would take away from what I do as a coach and what I feel like is very helpful for helping people throughout recovery. For the tangible things that people need to be successful in recovery, I don’t feel like I need a coaching certificate. People that do want someone who’s certified, I absolutely think that they should, and I’m sure there are great coaches that are.
But YouTube is pretty much how I do any kind of marketing. That’s all I really do, is that channel. And lots and lots of free information. If you really wanted to recover and you don’t have the means for a coach, you definitely have all the information you need to be able to do so in my videos. And your podcast, obviously, and your podcast also is incredibly invaluable information that can help people.
Other than my coaching website, it’s just YouTube. And other interviews or whatever with other people. But yeah, I’d say that’s the majority of where you’ll find me, on YouTube.
Chris Sandel: In the show notes, I’ll put your YouTube and I’ll put your website. Thanks for sharing all your wisdom on the channel and coming on and doing this today.
Becky Freestone: Yeah, you bet. Thank you so much for having me, Chris.
Chris Sandel: You’re welcome.
So that was my conversation with Becky Freestone. I really love what she’s doing; I think she’s a great voice in the eating disorder world. If you liked what you heard from Becky today and you’re not already following her on Instagram – not Instagram. Maybe on Instagram, but I meant YouTube. If you’re not already following her on YouTube, then I highly recommend that you do. As I said in the intro, I think she’s got over 300 videos, and they’re all fairly short in the whole scheme of things – 5, 7, 10 minutes long, but with a very good, clear message in each one of them.
So if you’re not following her and you want more of this information coming in to you on a regular basis, then I would highly recommend following her channel.
As I said at the top, I’m currently taking on new clients. If you’re wanting help to reach a place of full recovery, I would love to be able to support you and help you to get there. You can send an email to info@seven-health.com, and put ‘coaching’ in the subject line.
So that is it for this week’s show. I hope that you found it valuable. I know there was so many insights that Becky shared, and I suspect you’re going to have got a lot out of this episode. I’ll be back with another new show next week. Until then, take care of yourself and I will see you soon!
Thanks so much for joining this week. Have some feedback you’d like to share? Leave a note in the comment section below!
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