Transitioning into Summer with Body Compassion and Confidence
Welcome to the Satiated Podcast where we explore physical and emotional hunger, satiation and healing your relationship with your food and body. I'm your host, Stephanie Mara Fox, your Somatic Nutritional Counselor. I'm so excited to chat with Cherie Miller today. Cherie has her Master's in Counseling and is a licensed professional counselor in the state of Texas, she started the company Food Freedom Therapy, and her team specializes in helping women and men make peace with food and their bodies. She has 15 years of experience as an eating disorder mentor, speaker, educator and advocate and is a member of the International Association of Eating Disorder Professionals, and the Association for Size, Diversity and Health. She loves to speak on topics related to food and body freedom and I'm excited to dive in with her today. So welcome, Cherie.
Cherie Miller 00:59
Hi, thank you so much for having me on. I'm really happy to be here today and talk about these things. I love talking about this stuff, I could do it all day long.
Stephanie Mara 01:06
I am exactly the same way. I've been following you on Instagram for a long time. I really love everything you put out in the world. And I can really sense how much of a passion you have for these topics around food and body image. And I'm curious, like, how did you get into this work? What's a little bit of your background of what got you to this point?
Cherie Miller 01:27
For sure. So like a lot of people who do this work, I've had my own struggles with food and body stuff. And when I was in college actually went through a clinical eating disorder experience. Long story short, I thought I was recovered for a long time. I was in the sense that I wasn't really engaging in a lot of very clinical eating disorder behaviors. But I definitely still had one foot in diet culture, I had not made peace with food, I still struggled a lot with my body image. And so I ended up having a pretty big relapse several years later. And that was kind of it was a wake up call that I had not done all the healing that I needed to do. And so went back to therapy and doing the work that I needed to do and really felt like I finally reached that point where I could say I had really made peace with food and my body, which, you know, I say that with a grain of salt of like, this is it's still a journey, not a destination, I I'm like everybody else I have my bad body image days, there's no such thing as perfection, especially in the culture that we live in. Right? That makes it really hard. But overall, I am in a much better place. And the way I describe it to clients is I have managed to detach my identity from what my appearance looks like. So even though I might have bad body image days, still, it doesn't have the same effect on me, it doesn't, it doesn't determine my happiness, or my self esteem or any of those things like it used to.
Stephanie Mara 02:57
Yeah, I talk about the exact same things with my clients as well that until the culture changes, we are all surrounded by body image culture, by diet culture that infuse so much into our own beliefs about ourselves. So we really have to normalize until that changes, and there's just not as much of a focus on our external appearance anymore. We're all gonna go through it, every single one of us, even the individuals who are helping you with your food and body journey, they are on their own journey as well.
Cherie Miller 03:32
Yeah, absolutely. I mean, it's really like fighting an uphill battle, when you're trying to fight a larger cultural message that's everywhere, especially if you are in a larger body. And you are constantly getting the message that your body is wrong, you know, even from the medical community, it's like you can't even go to the doctor and not get that message. And so, you know, I definitely have so much respect and admiration for anybody who is undertaking this work because it is hard. And it takes a lot of courage. It takes a lot of grit, so to speak, to kind of go against the cultural grain.
Stephanie Mara 04:07
Yeah, you kind of have to feel a little bit like you're a rebel, because you are...
Cherie Miller 04:11
Absolutely!
Stephanie Mara 04:12
You're coming into every situation saying no, thank you, I'm not going to do the normalized thing of criticizing my body or talking down about it. And it is so normalized, in conversations just to talk about our body image or talk about what diet we're doing. And when you start letting that go. There can be such a huge transition even in your friendships, in your relationships, in your family about you showing up differently.
Cherie Miller 04:41
Yeah, absolutely. It can be a bit isolating if you're around people who that still very caught up in that and that's, you know, maybe even part of your relationship with them, you know, in way too many relationships, female relationships specifically, revolve around that kind of shared bonding over talking about about bodies and talking about diets and all of that kind of stuff. And it's, it's sad, and it starts so young. You know, I think that's one of the reasons too, it's really hard. It's, you know, most of us have struggle with this stuff for a really long time. You know, some of my clients don't even remember having a period of time. I know, I know, we all do, we are not born hating our bodies, I always say, we're not born this way. It was something that we were taught. Thankfully, that means anything we were taught, we can unlearn. But you know, I've got a three year old girl and she, she has no self consciousness about her body, she loves the way it moves, she loves the way it looks, she just is joyful about all of it. And I, I absolutely dread the day that she gets that first message that there's something wrong with her body. And it should be different. I just wish I could wrap her up in bubble wrap and protect her from all of that. But I know I can't, you know, the best thing I can do is help her like really develop a sense of solid identity in who she is and really speak truth and you know, help her develop a sense of resilience really, is the way that we put it is having a resilience against all of this, because it's that it doesn't hurt, or that it doesn't cause damage, but being resilient in the face of that.
Stephanie Mara 06:20
Yeah. I think even having the awareness of what diet culture is, we are so bombarded by it. I remember when I was a teenager, like Seventeen Magazine was still a big thing in my world. And just going and flipping through those pages of that magazine at such a young age, it fills your head with so many things. And so I think even for our younger generations of teaching them about questioning what they're reading, what they're seeing, and learning about what this diet culture thing is, so that they can get really curious when they see something, a messaging that feels like, Oh, I think that might be diet culture messaging.
Cherie Miller 07:01
Yeah, absolutely. We talk a lot with clients, about being a discerning consumer, you know, which we typically aren't, you know, and it's funny, again, being a parent, how much I see things through my kids eyes, you know, when we're just watching TV, and commercials come on. And, you know, maybe the more obvious things like an ad for Noon, or Weight Watchers, but sometimes it's more subtle, it's things like eye cream for women, or, you know, even now they're like pushing the, the like brush and gray away for men, you know, for their beards, and it's, you know, just I'm sitting there, and I'm thinking, from their perspective, what are they absorbing, they're learning that these things are bad, and we should try to make them go away. And we should spend a lot of time and money to, you know, look a certain way. And it just, it is just kind of crushing to think that that innocence is slowly taken from them. It's been taken from us. And you know, how hard we have to fight to kind of get back to that place where we don't see ourselves that way. Again, not that this doesn't affect men. I think it does, and it is more and more. But I think still predominantly, it's aimed so much at women, because we're treated still very much like our our bodies are our social currency, our parents is our social currency, and that, you know, our bodies are for somebody else's visual pleasure. We were meant to be consumed in that way.
Stephanie Mara 08:22
Yeah. So we are moving into summer right now.
Cherie Miller 08:26
Oh, boy.
Stephanie Mara 08:27
I want to hear more about your thoughts on that transition.
Cherie Miller 08:31
Yeah, it's, this is a tough time of year, I think for a lot of women, because you're coming out of winter, you're starting to get back into clothes that might not fit anymore. I mean, nobody can see, but I'm like, raise my hand this year, that was totally me as well. You know, and that's, that's tough. Because, you know, you may have clothes that you really like that you can't fit in anymore. Or then you have to go through the experience of shopping, which a lot of us don't enjoy, especially if finances are tight, right. So, you know, I think there's that experience of, you know, potentially not fitting in your clothes from last summer. And just the fact that, you know, it's hot, and we're doing outdoor activities where we tend to not be as covered up and so it can feel way more vulnerable in that regard. And we might, you know, feel pressured to show off certain parts of our bodies that we feel really self conscious about or feel like are wrong somehow.
Stephanie Mara 09:24
Yeah, yeah. What have you found has been supportive exploration during this time that you've dived into with your clients around even how to question like, the bikini body thing, or all the things we get, you know, bombarded with over Hey, get back into those summer shorts and like, how it's so insidious in the messages that we get during this time of year.
Cherie Miller 09:49
Yeah, I think challenging that idea that, you know, somehow you have to earn the right to wear certain things by having a certain body and just recognizing how flawed that is. And I really feel like once you start examining whether these diet culture values really line up with our own values, then I think that's where we can start unpacking it a little bit. And most of the time, we do feel like for us these things apply, but we don't necessarily for other people. And I don't know that many women who would tell their their best girlfriend or their sister or their daughter, you can't wear those shorts, you, you know, you I can see your cellulite, you know, like, right, we don't apply those same standards of like body perfection to other people the way that we do to ourselves.
Stephanie Mara 10:38
Yeah, yeah, and even I find comparison often peaks during this time of year, especially when individuals are maybe wearing less clothing. Because you deserve to feel comfortable. You deserve to not feel like you have to wear long sleeves or long pants just to hide some part of your body when it's 80 degrees outside. But then there's all this internal dialogue that comes up. And I'm curious how you have what you have navigated or suggested or explored with your clients around when those inner dialogues come up around wearing certain clothing, or those comparisons that come up, when we're kind of showing off more of our body.
Cherie Miller 11:19
A couple of things, one, just in a larger context of the work that I do with clients, we talk a lot about self compassion, I'm a big advocate of that, because I think it's so different than necessarily trying to convince ourselves how wonderful we are or how beautiful we are. It's like, well, yes, but then in some some ways we're not. And sometimes we're not those things, right, like, we eventually meet the reality of we are, we are not some of these things that we would like to be. And I think that's where self compassion is much more of a powerful playing, because it it recognizes that all people, including ourselves, have value and worth, yeah, flawed, imperfect, good, bad, all of it together. And I think that is such a powerful shift away from it feeling like, we have to earn those things. Or that, you know, we're disqualified because we, you know, make mistakes, or we aren't perfect in some way, or we don't have the quote unquote, body ideal, just speaking more gently to ourselves, than that inner critic tends to speak, right. And sometimes we don't even notice it, because that's our normal internal dialogue. It may be a dialogue that we adopted from somebody in our life, maybe we did have a mom who was critical of our bodies, or you know, somebody else, but just being able to shift into, again, how would I talk to my best friend, you know, I would speak with much more compassion and gentleness and kindness. And we inherently are much better at building others up. And so it's like, we have that quality, we have that ability to do that. We just have to practice doing it on ourselves.
Stephanie Mara 13:02
Yeah. And I love that you're bringing in of just normalizing what I'm hearing of it might actually feel a little weird at first, to speak to yourself in a different way, when maybe you've had an internal dialogue that is felt so harsh, and so demeaning, and so cruel that to say, You know what, I'm going to tell myself, I'm good enough today, like, you might not believe that at first, or it might feel kind of weird to tell yourself that it might feel a little different in your body, because it's just not what you're maybe accustomed to.
Cherie Miller 13:34
Yeah, yeah, that is definitely a normal part of the process. You know, and I think some of that too does stems from the idea that maybe we don't believe that we're worthy of that compassion, or that gentleness, or we think that if we offer ourselves that we won't be our best selves, or that somehow that's incompatible with wanting to grow and be better. And that, you know, that's just not the case. I really, highly recommend Dr. Neff's work on self compassion, and she addresses a lot of those issues. She has a book and a workbook that are fabulous. And I use that in my work with clients. So yeah, and it's one of those things like anything it takes, it takes a while, it's a process of learning to change. And for that to become the new norm. And it doesn't happen overnight. For sure. You know, I always say, it took us years to get to the place that we're at so expecting that within a few days, weeks, maybe even months, that we're not going to have any of those struggles anymore, you know, we're just that that's not realistic. And it's also it's not very compassionate. You know, just to set ourselves up with that, that really rigid expectation.
Stephanie Mara 14:47
Yeah, it does take time and practice. And it is such a journey, you know, especially when you finally realize, hey, I don't think I have the kind of relationship with my food or body that I really want to have, it's not really making me feel the way I want to feel in my system, that that's just the first tiny baby step of Oh, something could be different. And it can be even a multi year long adventure, and then an ongoing adventure after that of continuing to show up for yourself again, and again. And I think, really normalizing just the process that it is to unravel so much from the messages that maybe you received from culture, or family, or teachers, or whoever it might have been. Those are internalized and ingrained, and it takes time to just like discover them and explore them and then even reshape them.
Cherie Miller 15:39
Yeah. And one of the things that I like to share with clients is that it is possible to do that, because sometimes, that's also one of the barriers is it feels impossible. Another one of those double standards, well maybe not for other people, but for me, you know, I can't get there. And I like to talk about, you know, the brain science about how our brains are actually very moldable, which is a cool thing that we've realized in neuroscience over the last couple of decades, because before we really thought brains were, you know, they were pretty much set in stone, so to speak after adolescents and realizing how moldable they are, we've realized that has huge implications for everything from helping rehabilitate stroke victims to even doing this kind of cognitive work that, yes, this is the way that we've always thought about things. These are our our thinking patterns. But we can change that because we can create new neural pathways by practicing these things over and over and over. And then eventually, that becomes our new norm. And so I always tell people, like I get that feels impossible. This is one of those like, call that emotional reasoning in psychology, that just because it feels a certain way doesn't mean it's true, you know, our feelings are valid, they matter. They're important, but they're not always a reflection of reality.
Stephanie Mara 17:04
Yeah, kind of taking that pause between reaction and action, I think actually Brene Brown just put up a quote the other day, very similar to that of just how important that pause is, because that's the space where you actually get to do the work. And I want to normalize, like, taking that pause sometimes is really hard. It's so easy just to go into our habitual habits and patterns. And sometimes we need to do that sometimes. That's the thing that is the best tool that we have in the moment. And you just get to keep showing up for yourself again, and again and again. I get curious, you talk about quasi healing. And I want to hear more about how you define that. And what that is, just as we're talking about this healing journey.
Cherie Miller 17:53
Yeah, I think of it as a lot of what I was talking about earlier, when I was, in that period of time, where I considered myself recovered from my eating disorder. And, you know, again, clinically speaking, I didn't check the boxes anymore to have like an official diagnosis. But was I recovered in the sense that, you know, did I have a peaceful relationship with food? Was it a place where I had any kind of body acceptance? No, those those relationships with food and my body were still very stressed, full of anxiety, guilt, fear, right. And I think that's kind of that, that idea of this, like quasi recovery of, sort of, but not really, or, you know, for me, it also is a sense that it was a sense of I thought I was, but I wasn't right. So I think there can be an element of both. And, you know, I just want to encourage people to, like, push beyond that, just because I may not have a clinical eating disorder, that these struggles are still very valid, they're real, they matter. And they, they can really affect our quality of life, right, because they take up so much of our mental and emotional space, sometimes they they are getting in the way of us going out and living our lives, you know, and really engaging in activities and relationships that would be very meaningful and bring us a lot of joy.
Stephanie Mara 19:13
Yeah, I really hear what you're pointing to is like, how much there are these phases, I really see that with those that I work with as well, where they come in, and they have this sense of awareness. Okay, I don't have the kind of relationship with food and body that I want. And then as we start to maybe explore things and challenge things resistance might come up, you know, oh, wow, I didn't connect that before that feels like it hits really hard. And maybe that needs to be explored for a while around, oh, I never realized that I did this pattern or judged this thing because of this other thing. And that you might get to a point where it's, oh, I'm not binge eating, or I'm not emotional eating or I'm not in eating disorder behavior anymore. And there's still things that I'm doing to kind of maybe control my body shape. You know, it shows up in the it starts to show up in maybe more subtler ways than the like, really overt patterns that are happening.
Cherie Miller 20:07
Yeah, absolutely. And so much of that goes back to the fact that a lot of that is very normalized in our culture. So it's understandable that we don't recognize it as being an issue, or being disordered on some level. Because, you know, people around us are doing it, it might even be promoted by, you know, things on TV or doctors even, you know, and so, it's a lot harder to recognize something's a problem when it's normalized by a lot of people. And so, you know, just some, you know, offering some, like grace there for ourselves, if we find ourselves in that place, because I often post on Instagram about, you know, these are signs that you might be in diet culture, or you might be struggling with some disordered eating. And there are always people that think, oh, you know, Oh, okay. I didn't realize that fell into the category of disordered eating, you know, I'll get private messages from people or, you know, comments, and I think that can be eye opening. You know, there's, I think about, you know, some of the stuff that we've heard from Oprah, you know, over the years, you know, that people latch on to, you know, and it's like, well, celebrity says it, it must, it must be it must be good, you know, and just goes back to that, being discerning consumers about the messages that we get, and being aware and being honest with ourselves about how those things actually affect us. And whether they're working for us, you know, for our mental and physical health.
Stephanie Mara 21:35
Yeah. How do you find or what have you found is like someone being able to start discerning, does this work for me? Or not? Like, what clues could they start picking up on?
Cherie Miller 21:47
I usually have clients take some time to go through the different areas of their life, and whether that's social, career, you know, marriage, if they're married, the, again, the physical health and mental health, all of those things, and really take some time to write down? How is what I'm doing affecting these things, both positively and negatively. Right? Because, let's be honest, there are some benefits to all of this, right? So being willing to and having the courage to really take an honest look at it. And then I usually like to to explore, what could it look like, if we did get to a place of being at peace with food in our body, and just having a vision of what we might even be working towards if we decide to work towards that. You know, I think it's it it is such a scary journey to take, and it is so challenging, that I truly believe having a clarity about why am I doing this? Why am I doing the hard things? What am I working towards? Even if you don't totally believe that it's possible. I always tell clients something similar to what you said earlier, like, just crack open the door, you don't have to like fling it totally wide open and run through it. But if you just crack it, peak in, like, you know, just consider, you know that life could be like that, and what would be different what it would, what would it look like? You know what I often say that it's not necessarily that I got to a place where I stopped wanting to be thin or to look a certain way. I just realized there were things I wanted way more in life than that. And I was not willing to sacrifice those things on the altar of thinness anymore.
Stephanie Mara 23:38
Yeah, yeah. So many powerful points there. I love that the cracking of the door of Yeah, you don't have to fully go all the way in, that might actually feel incredibly overwhelming to try and change literally everything that you have been doing all at once. And I really feel that this baby step is or this journey is all about baby steps, you have to take it just one focus at a time. Let me focus on I'm just going to eat breakfast today. And we need breakfast again tomorrow. And then I'm going to eat breakfast again the next day. And I know it sounds so simple, but just that act of continuing to show up and say I'm going to feed my body every day and eat consistently is such a game changer. And that it starts to heal that relationship with your body. Because I think a lot of this journey is also like we're talking about bigger things, that sometimes why this journey happened but also on this journey it can be stepping back into more trust in your body that it is going to talk to you and you can listen and respond back.
Cherie Miller 24:43
Yeah, and that and that is a really tough one a lot of times for so many reasons. I mean, we've gotten them. We have gotten the message that we can't trust our bodies, and that's often being been reinforced by our own patterns of eating. Where we restrict and that, you know, that creates this primal response and our bodies plus the psychological drive to eat. And then we think, see there, I couldn't control myself, I don't have any self control, I don't have the willpower, right, all those things. So we have those beliefs. And also, so many people who are struggling with these things have experienced trauma that have really taught them to either distress their body or disconnect from their body. So, you know, I, I was just saying earlier to someone, I'm like, food issues do not happen in a vacuum. So there's usually so many other layers to healing our relationship with food and our bodies. And I find that that trauma is a pretty, a pretty common one that we don't always connect to what's going on with food, or how we view our bodies and a body image sense.
Stephanie Mara 25:54
100% agree, I find that I've been doing this work a really long time and this topic about trauma has been coming up more and more. And it's something that I have also infused more into the focus of my practice of, we need to talk about these things at some point, because it's why the food and body behaviors maybe came in to begin with, to support you in feeling some sense of safety or control. And to continue to focus on like, if we look at it as the surface level concern, you know, a lot of people maybe come in or if you're listening to this, you might even be thinking, I just got to get this binge eating under control. Like, I just got to get this emotional eating under control. I totally get that. Absolutely. This is why we you know, initially talk about binge eating and emotional eating. But there's something underneath that actually, that's the the nugget of wisdom that your body is providing, of, hey, let's do this so you will give me attention. And sometimes we have to go underneath of what your body is trying to get you attention about.
Cherie Miller 26:59
Yeah, I completely agree. And, and I think, you know, that goes back to what I was saying earlier, too, about the making a list of the good things and the bad things about, you know, the way that you're eating and relating to food in your body and all of that stuff. And again, there are good things about that, whether that's because we get a sense of control or safety for a lot of us that is how we have coped with things that maybe we didn't otherwise know how to cope with. And so it can feel really unsafe to talk about taking these things away unless we're doing some of that deeper work. You know, what often I find when I go through that exercise with clients is these are some very legitimate needs that are being met by these behaviors, And, I say and a lot, but comes from my, one of the therapies that I work from where and you know, we talk a lot about being able to hold to things that seem opposite at once. So I prefer the term And.
Stephanie Mara 28:00
Yeah, love it. Me too.
Cherie Miller 28:03
And we can also get those needs met, and other ways that will be more helpful and less destructive.
Stephanie Mara 28:13
Yeah, thank you so much for bringing that up of you're doing your food and body behaviors because they work. Like no shame here, no judgment, like they came into your life because they were effective. And they continued because they have been effective. You just may be at a point now where you're realizing they're not really giving you the long term experience that you were looking for originally anymore.
Cherie Miller 28:38
Yeah, it comes at a cost, is what I always say. It's like it might work but what at what cost, you know, it does damage in all these other areas. And so if we can explore what it would be like to meet the these needs, and ways that would be more helpful and wouldn't come at such a high cost? You know, is that something that we're willing to venture into, you know, some hard things to get to that place. You know, again, if if somebody's in a larger body, I just want to acknowledge that some of what they're trying to avoid is the way that people in larger bodies are mistreated. And that's totally understandable. I mean, talk about very legitimate attempts to self protect. It's one of those though, at the same time, at what cost to yourself, which is one reason I'm so passionate about talking about the wider culture issues, because it's like this is this is an individual issue. But it's it's not just an individual issue. There's definitely something at the system level that is creating and perpetuating a lot of these issues that make it really hard for people to recover and to want to give up, you know, some of this obsession with food and trying to be thin and lose weight.
Stephanie Mara 29:53
Yeah, I absolutely agree. We can start on the individual level, but we also have a responsibility to talk about the bigger things at play here that make it really hard for someone to feel safe in their body, even on a day to day basis, because of the world that they live in.
Cherie Miller 30:11
Yeah, yeah, unfortunately, that is the reality. And, you know, as somebody who is in a straight size body, you know, I don't have to experience that. And so I always want to acknowledge that with the people that I'm working with that I I can't totally understand. And so I very much support body autonomy. And if, if you want to continue trying to lose weight, I understand where that's coming from, you know, I always hope for something different, because I'm like, I know, I know what this is doing to you to be pursuing this. And at the same time, I understand and I'm always going to support people making decisions for their own bodies that feel right to them.
Stephanie Mara 30:54
Yeah, I think something you're pointing to is learning how to sit with discomfort, that can be discomfort of the world that you live in, that can be discomfort of just, I'm experiencing a really intense emotion, how do you feel like discomfort in your experience plays a role on this food and body healing journey?
Cherie Miller 31:13
I feel like it plays a huge role. Whether that is, you know, some of the examples that you gave, I know, in my own disordered eating journey, so much of that was about trying to avoid uncomfortable emotions and using food to numb that to distract that. But also, we were talking earlier about wearing certain clothes for summer type of thing. And it's like, sometimes, one of the best ways to work through that is to just do it. And that, that sounds so like, I don't want to make it sound like that's just so easy. You know, just wear the shorts, wear the tank top, because it's not, it's definitely anything that easy. But I I have found both personally and professionally, that it's, it's often in the doing that the fear, the anxiety, all of that lessons, we want it to be able to like get to a place where we can just talk ourselves into a place where we're not feeling anxious or fear fearful anymore, and then we're ready to do the thing, whatever the thing is, but it typically doesn't work that way. It's by doing the thing over and over, over time, that we find that fear and anxiety and all those things lessons and becomes more manageable, if not disappears completely.
Stephanie Mara 32:30
Yeah, yeah, I've experienced that both personally and professionally as well, that that process of let's go back to, you know, summer clothes, and all the messages we're about to be bombarded with probably it's already happening, it's going to probably ramp up in the next month or so. But, you know, it's saying, okay, the only way to actually, if you've wanted to wear shorts or short sleeves, or a specific kind of bathing suit, the only way to know that you can do that is to actually do it. You know, I think that we can get caught and stuck in our heads of okay, let me psych myself up. Or let me just lose that last five pounds, and then I'll be ready to do it. And you can actually do it right here and right now. And it kind of gives you a different embodied experience. Because right now there's fear that's coming up in the body around wearing those particular pieces of clothing. And by wearing them and even, you can even walk around the neighborhood, you know, talking about that, like, oh, just open the door a crack, like do something like maybe super small walk around the house, in that bathing suit. And even giving yourself the experience of I'm doing it, I'm wearing it, it's on my body. I'm even walking around my neighborhood in this piece of clothing I said I couldn't wear and nothing bad happened. And your body starts to remember that.
Cherie Miller 33:54
Yeah, yeah, for sure. And I love that you're talking about starting out small if you need to, and growing big. And that's, that's absolutely what we work on in a therapeutic setting. When we talk about we call it exposure and response prevention, which we use in eating disorder treatment, we use it in OCD treatment. And you know, it's really just that concept of, you know, taking a look at what are the things that you're afraid of or that caused anxiety, start with the little things, get some success, and then start building on that until you work out to the things that are the scariest for you. And you know, I know not everybody has the resources, but if you do, definitely seek out support from a coach or a therapist who can help you with that. I think having somebody that can take you through that process who can cheer you on and support you and believe in you when you don't believe in yourself. You know, I think that can be really helpful if that's something that you know, you have the financial means to do.
Stephanie Mara 34:55
Yeah, I so appreciate you bringing that in because oftentimes, I have found on this journey so many individuals have that inner dialogue. And I did too, for a long time as well, I have to figure this out on my own. Like, this is not something I can reach out for support about or even if there are shameful feelings about the habits or patterns with your food and body that you are doing, and healing happens in community healing happens in co-regulation. And so, you know, to be able to enter into a relationship with someone else is so important to further yourself on this path.
Cherie Miller 35:33
Yeah, yeah, I, I completely agree with that as well, that that community piece is really important. We just did a anti-diet retreat a few months ago. And it, it was just amazing. It was the first time we've ever done it, we didn't really know what to expect. But that was kind of one of our goals is that there would be some community built during that weekend. And then after, the lady that works with me, who's fantastic. Her name is Lindley. And she's an anti-diet coach and works in the, she's in a larger body, so she is very active in the like fat liberation, fat acceptance space, you know, just because again, it can be really hard to find that community in our own personal lives. I mean, if we're fortunate enough to be surrounded by people who, you know, aren't all in with diet culture and fatphobia, and all that stuff. That's amazing. But I don't think that's most people's experience. And so it can feel kind of alone. And that's definitely one of the benefits to the, the culture that we live in now, where we're so connected through social media, right, that definitely can have its drawbacks, if we're not careful, right, it's a tool. So it's like how we use the tool determines like whether that will be helpful for us or not. But I think being able to connect with community that we might not have in our, in our own real life, day
to day, that can be a really powerful thing. And there, there are so many places now where you can find that community,
Stephanie Mara 36:59
That sounds like such an amazing offering that you just did. And it also brings people together to know you are not alone. I find that especially in groups that you realize, oh, wait, you thinking that too, like you do that behavior, too. It just kind of normalizes that, you don't have to navigate this alone, you're not alone in what you're experiencing. And it's okay. It's okay even the habits and patterns that you've been doing with your food and body. Like those are the best things that maybe you had in a particular moment.
Cherie Miller 37:30
Yeah. And that was one of the most powerful things I felt was not only just the vulnerability of the women who showed up and were courageous to share some very personal things, sometimes some very painful things but through that vulnerability, right, speaking of Brene Brown, through that vulnerability, that connection that becomes possible with other people who haven't gone through the exact same thing, but have gone through similar enough that there's this mutual shared experience of like, I get it, I see you and I feel seen. And that alone can be very powerful in this journey.
Stephanie Mara 38:10
Yeah, absolutely. Even you've kind of referenced a lot of terms that individuals listening to this may not even know about fat liberation and weight stigma, and, you know, all of those kinds of things. And I would say, go back and re-listen, like I think we just kind of went through some of those terms, like if you want to like rewind, a couple of minutes.
Cherie Miller 38:31
Sorry!
Stephanie Mara 38:32
No, you're perfect. You know what I'm even I'm going to put it in the show notes of some hashtags to look up. Because I think you're right on social media. It has its drawbacks. Absolutely. I completely agree with you. And it has its benefits, too. Like, I know, I work a lot with my clients around like curating your feed where you don't even have those diet culture messages in your Instagram feed, in your Facebook feed, in anything where when you see an ad, you're like, how did that get there? Like, no, don't show me that.
Cherie Miller 39:07
Yeah!
Stephanie Mara 39:07
Your feed is so refined, you're like, yes, these are all the messages that I want to receive. And sometimes that can be using hashtags. And so you get to find some of these messages that you're looking for. And I'll include some of the ones that you already talked about in the show notes just so people can even click on them and start to discover more of these communities that are really out there supporting individuals and feeling more around body respect or body acceptance, or yeah, all the different realms in food and body that one can find on social media.
Cherie Miller 39:41
Because I find that because we are in this culture where it's everywhere we have to be really intentional about pulling out of that as much as we can. Can't do it completely, because it is everywhere. But we really can eliminate a lot of the places where we're getting this messaging And then we can be intentional about seeking out different messages. You know, I was just talking with a client earlier about, you know, our brains, normalize whatever it sees over and over and over or hears over and over and over. So it's important to diversify our feed so that we're seeing people in average bodies, you know that, and I use average in the sense of like, bodies that are diverse in size and color and abilities, and, you know, ages and all the things that we don't really get naturally by media, because we're typically going to see a young, thin, pretty white girl. So much of the stuff, right. And that is definitely not the norm, but we tend to think it is because that's just what we predominantly see. And so giving our brains, different messages, different images, to start normalizing all of that stuff.
Stephanie Mara 40:57
Yeah, I love that really filling your feed with different body shapes and sizes, and seeing people thriving, and feeling comfortable, and embracing their different body shapes and sizes, just again, normalizing you can be okay, exactly where you are right now, it doesn't have to be you pushing yourself to be something that maybe isn't even sustainable or possible for your body. And I find it this often goes into a bigger picture of, well, if this is just my body, and I'm no longer worrying about maybe what I'm eating as much or how I'm moving. And I'm just doing the things that make me feel good. But then I think this often can go to this like bigger picture of talking about, well, like, you get to live whatever life you want to live in this body you have right now and you don't have to continue to spend one more millisecond on trying to change yourself, unless that resonates with you. And you're doing it from a place of, I have a desire for growth. Not this is something I'm like, quote unquote, supposed to or should do.
Cherie Miller 42:06
And that can be so exciting. And it can be really scary.
Stephanie Mara 42:10
Yeah.
Cherie Miller 42:10
Because it, if you already have a sense of what kind of life you would like to have outside of dieting and body obsession, then you're you're going to be ecstatic that you finally have the dieting and body obsession, then you're you're going to be ecstatic that you finally have the capacity to really engage in that life. But I find it's not uncommon for people to not really have an idea outside of the dieting and the thinking about their bodies and the you know, the exercising to lose weight, you know, it's it really is a sense of, oh my gosh, well, who who am I, without these things and finding that, wow, I don't have hobbies, my hobbies was, you know, my hobbies was dieting. And, you know, I It's kind of ironic that now looking back that it was a food metaphor, but for me, I remember thinking, I'll just be Swiss Cheese, like, I'll just have these holes in me, you know, and I really thought what will there be to me, which that alone points to one of the barriers sometimes and, and wanting to really get this up is it can take on an identity, you know, I was really like thought of myself as Oh, I'm the healthy person, you know, I, I do all the right things. And I'm the one now I look back and I think I'm sorry, coworkers, you know, I was the one bringing chickpea cookies to the company potlucks, you know, it's just like, nobody wants that. Nobody. But, you know, I'm sure they didn't eat any of them. But at the same time, they'd still stop by my cubicle and say, like, Hey, you're so healthy. And you know, what are you, what are you doing to look this way, and you know, all this stuff that, you know, filled that self esteem void, and you know, that identity boy, because I didn't know who I was outside of that. So I think it's also important to acknowledge that aspect of this journey. And, you know, one of the challenges and wanting to heal is that while it can be exciting to think about what is possible, if I free up that mental, and emotional and timespace it can also be a little scary. And if that's if that's where someone is at, that's totally valid.
Stephanie Mara 44:21
Yeah, thanks for bringing that up. Because it can be both. It can be really exciting. Just talking about that both like before, it can be both exciting. And it can also feel really daunting and overwhelming and scary because I love the imagery of the cheese. That's so great of like, Oh, if I kind of take out okay, alright, I'm taking out dieting, and I'm taking out pushing myself to work out more than my body wants to and I'm taking out eating foods that I really don't even enjoy, but I was making myself eating though. It's like, you have all these holes of like, Oh, what am I going to fill all those holes with and at first, you really might not know. And that's really okay. You don't have to know right now, that is an ongoing discovery that as you even pointed to before you can work with someone to discover what do you want to fill back in that space.
Cherie Miller 45:14
Absolutely. And, you know, if you have people that are close to you, who are willing to give you some feedback to speak into you, like, what did they see about you, you know, what have they noticed that you enjoy? Or that you're good at? Or thinking back to when you were a kid? What did you like to do? You know, sometimes too as we're healing our relationship with movement, we talked about that, well, what did you enjoy as a kid, you know, let's, let's think outside the box, we often get kind of pigeon holed and thinking like, moving our body and exercise, you know, not only does it you know, have to be for a certain reason, which is usually to try to control our appearance, but we also get kind of pigeon holed in into thinking that it has to look a certain way. And that's not true, either. It's like, movement can look like going and doing a hula hoop with your kids on the driveway. Or, you know, I had one client that did roller derby, I was like, You go girl, like, you know, live your dream, go out there. And you know, we overcomplicate it a lot of times, and yeah, I just love that idea of experimenting. And earlier, you called this whole thing an adventure. And I love that word for this because it really is. And that's such a positive way, I think to reframe it was like, it was an adventure and adventures can be scary. And they're exciting and joyful, and probably all the emotions at different points in time.
Stephanie Mara 46:44
Yeah, that is a word that I've been playing with for a while of yes, they're all these many intense emotions that may come up on this journey. And just with like, any adventure, like, Okay, I need a pack, and how's the plane ride gonna go and like, oh, our bus was late, or like all the things that can maybe kind of like, be a little bit of mishap on an adventure, that's gonna happen on this one, too. And you can also have maybe even like, a good time, on this adventure, like the moments where you ate something you would never allow yourself to eat before and you allowed yourself to enjoy it, even giving yourself a moment to experience Wowww look at this food experience I just had. And like, that's a part of your healing food and body adventure. That felt good. It can also feel good sometimes, too.
Cherie Miller 47:37
Yes, yes, absolutely. And those are the times that can help springboard you through the times that are a little more challenging, and a little more uncomfortable is when you have those moments of oh, okay, this, this is like a taste. Again, pardon the metaphor, but a taste of what this could be like. And it's like a little glimpse of that freedom and that joy that you may not have experienced for a really long time, but you start to realize, maybe, maybe it is possible, maybe I can get there.
Stephanie Mara 48:10
I just love everything that you're sharing today. And I want to make sure that we leave time of how can people keep in touch with you, you are you put out such important information into the world and new insights and you know, challenging diet culture. So how can people keep in touch with you if they want to keep in touch with you, and also, you know, any offerings that you have, locally, or virtually, or anything like that coming up as well?
Cherie Miller 48:34
Sure, thank you. So I'm on Instagram, I've been really busy lately, so not as active as usual. But I try to stay pretty active on there. Because I do love the community that I've found there. And my handle is @foodfreedomtherapist. I also have a website right now it's foodfreedomtherapy. I actually am in the process of rebranding and changing our name. So we're going to be nourished soul center for healing, I just decided we needed something a little more inclusive, because now I have dieticians on staff, I hope to incorporate some sort of like trauma informed movement down the line, that Lindley who's our coach, and so I just wanted something that felt a little more expansive, to really touch more on all the different things that we're doing. So that will be the new name, but the website will redirect if somebody comes to this after that takes place. And then online, we have a jumpstart guide to intuitive eating. So if Intuitive Eating is new to someone, they're not sure what it's all about. They're not sure where to start. But reading the book, which is awesome. The book is so good, but it's very meaty. It's very long. And if that feels a little daunting, this could be a good place to start. It's just a 12 page, little workbook type thing that you can download and that can be a good place to start.
Stephanie Mara 49:53
Wonderful. Well, I will put all of those links also in the show notes so people can keep in touch with you and just thank you so much for having this conversation today and bouncing around in different things in the food and body world, it's really important that we also just have these dialogues so that we get to continue to break down these diet cultures and really bring in more awareness around the messages that we're receiving. And so I just appreciate your time and your wisdom that you shared today.
Cherie Miller 50:22
Oh, thank you, Stephanie, for having me. It was a joy. Like I said, I love having these conversations. So I appreciate the invite for sure.
Stephanie Mara 50:30
Alright. Well, for anybody who's listening, if you have any questions, I will put our contact information in the show notes or reach out anytime. And thank you all for tuning in and looking forward to connecting with you all soon. Bye!
Keep in touch with Cherie here:
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/foodfreedomtherapist/
Website: www.foodfreedomtherapy.com
Contact: info@foodfreedomtherapy.com
Resources mentioned in this episode:
Kristin Neff: https://self-compassion.org/
Self-Compassion: The Proven Power of Being Kind to Yourself
The Mindful Self-Compassion Workbook
Intuitive Eating by Evelyn Tribole and Elyse Resch
Supportive Hashtags to look up:
#fatliberation #weightstigma #fatphobia #riotsnotdiets #dietsdontwork #losehatenotweight #bodyliberation #fatactivism #fatliberation #fatpositivity #fatacceptance #fatpositive #endweightstigma #fatbodypositivity #weightbias #fatshaming #bodyneutrality #fatisnotabadword #bodyacceptance #allbodiesaregoodbodies #bodyneutral #bodyrespect