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Connect with Lauren

📲 Instagram: @fillyourbowl_

Episode Transcript

Ryann

All right, everybody, I am super, super excited to welcome Lauren, otherwise known as fillyourbowl underscore, to our podcast today. We are going to be talking specifically about all things body changes through the recovery process. How to handle body changes, how to handle weight gain, how to get over fear of weight gain, not necessarily saying that you are, but just how to get over those fears and how to cope with that so that doesn’t keep you stuck. Lauren, thank you so much for taking the time and coming on here today. I am super, super grateful to be chatting with you.

Lauren

Of course, thank you so much for asking me. Very excited to be here and to be discussing all of these things. So I think such important information and like what we were saying I really wish that this kind of information was out there five years ago even like ten years ago really when I was like going through my report.

Ryann

Yes, oh my god, totally. So before we dive in just so everybody can get to know you a little bit better. I have a few icebreaker questions I’m gonna ask you. Just let me know first thing that comes to mind. Well, you don’t need to think about this one. But tell everybody where you’re from.

Lauren

So I’m from Essex, which is about an hour away from London.

Ryann

And what is the snack you absolutely cannot live without?

Lauren

Peanut butter. Easy.

Ryann

And crunchy or smooth?

Lauren

Crunchy every time.

Ryann

Yes. All right, fill in the blank. The thing I know way too much about is?

Lauren

Mm, country music.

Ryann

I love that, I love that, that’s hilarious. What is your number one go-to beauty product?

Lauren

Mascara.

Ryann

What kind do you like to use?

Lauren

I use Benefit, not sure if that is that okay yeah that’s what I use.

Ryann

Love it. You just won a contest and now get an endless supply of any product of your choice what would you choose?

Lauren

Okay, um, books.

Ryann

What kind of books do you like to read?

Lauren

I will read absolutely anything. I love fiction and non-fiction. So I love, yeah, love learning through books and then I love kind of escaping through books as well.

Ryann

So good. What is your favorite way to move your body?

Lauren

I love lifting weights.

Ryann

And how do you take your coffee?

Lauren

I have coconut milk latte, decaf as well actually I’ve jumped on the decaf train over the past year or so

Ryann

How many alarms do you snooze before you get up in the morning?

Lauren

Oh gosh, you are calling me out. Um, I, so my alarm goes off at six, I get up around quarter to seven. So it goes off every eight minutes. I don’t know what that is. I snooze it quite a bit.

Ryann

Oh my gosh. And last one, what does food freedom mean to you?

Lauren

It means being able to go out with friends and not think about the calories or anything in the foods that we’re eating and having zero guilt.

Ryann

Yes, I love that so much. So Lauren, for anybody who hasn’t come across your page yet or doesn’t know you, would you be open to telling us a little bit about your story? You are all about nutrition, you’re currently a nutrition student, so what got you interested in that? Tell us everything.

Lauren

Yeah, so I, going way back, so I had an eating disorder from the age of around 14 to 18. I was never diagnosed, which I had to really kind of work through. The feelings of it being valid as well, because of never having that diagnosis, and I know there’s so many other people out there as well that probably don’t really think that they have a problem or think that they’re not bad enough because they’ve never kind of gone to the doctors and got that diagnosis. I, yeah, from those ages, I mean, I was pretty much starving myself. I was bulimic as well and binge eating all the time. I then kind of came out to my mom of everything that was happening, had a little bit of a breakdown at the age of 16. She made me go to a nurse who weighed me and saw that I was borderline underweight, but because it was borderline, did absolutely nothing about it and just pretty much sent me on my way and just said you just need to put on some weight, which didn’t happen.

And over the next couple of years I was just kind of fluctuating really, not coping very well with my relationship, my body or food or anything. Then went to university and instead of completely starving myself and making myself sick all the time, it kind of turned into disordered eating. So I knew I wanted to get better, but I didn’t really know how. And I’ve never been someone to ask for help either. for my duration at university, so 18 to 22, pretty much fell into the disordered eating and excessively exercising phase and was pretty much going to the gym twice a day, had all of the food rules, like no eating after 8 p.m., low carbs, no going out for dinner on a weekday, no chocolate or anything like that on a weekday, saving all my calories for the weekend and then of course falling into that binge-restrict cycle, which we all know too well.

And then I actually moved out to America after university and that was when I started to get a little bit better. I think over the years I’ve like I’ve known that I’ve wanted to be normal, I’ve known I’ve wanted to heal my relationship, but I’ve never quite known how to do it. And each year I’m like getting one step closer, but I was still very far away from truly healing that relationship. So went out to America for two years. I found that I was one of the smaller people out in the US. So I guess that kind of made me feel a bit better, made me feel like I could eat a little bit more, but still had that very unhealthy relationship with exercise. So, yeah, I was out there for a couple of years, came home, it was just still disordered eating and excessively exercising.

And then this time last year, or it was around May last year, I completely, like, broke down and was like, I can’t do this anymore, like, I need to do something about this. I had injured myself from excessively exercising to the point where I couldn’t walk for a couple of months. So I just knew that I had to change and do something about it. So I started doing a lot of self-healing and just the inner work on my own. And it’s actually only been within the last three months that I’ve started seeing a therapist and it took me from the age of 14 to finally admit, okay, I need help, I need to see someone about this. And I’m now 26 and it’s just the progress I’ve made over the last three months has beaten kind of all of those years of me trying to do it on my own.

So I think, yeah, seeing a therapist, one of the best things that anyone could do for healing their relationship with food or their body, anything like that. But what got me into nutrition was, I mean, I’ve always, because of having the amazing disorder and stuff, I’ve always been very interested in food. It’s not that we don’t like food, like we’re actually very obsessed with it. So I’ve always been really interested in like the nutritional value of food and have always like known the calories and stuff like that back in my days when I was calorie counting. And I think I just really wanted to learn about food and learn that it’s not scary, it’s not something I should be afraid of, it’s actually something that I need, like my body needs this food to give me the energy to be able to live my life instead of having zero energy, like what I did back in the days.

And last year during the start of COVID, I just knew that I wanted to do something different with my life instead of the job that I was currently doing. I knew I wanted to help people that had been in a similar situation to me. So I thought, OK, I’m going to start with learning about nutrition, signed up to studying again and learning nutrition. And then eventually, I want to go into more of the psychology side of it as well so I can help people that have been in similar situations as me. So that was a very long, long-winded story of me and my journey.

Ryann

Oh girlfriend, I love it. You are so inspiring. So much just came up for me as you were saying that. First of all, I have to know, so you started this initially on your own. Where did you begin? Like, when you made up your mind, like, hey, I’m done, like, what did your next steps look like? Because you had, it sounds like about seven or eight months of work on your own before you went to a therapist, right?

Lauren

Yeah. So I think the first step was going back to college and studying nutrition. So that was initially first step, okay, I’m going to start learning about food and like, and all of the science behind it and why you need it and stuff. So that was pretty much first step. Second step, I bought a ton of books. One book that I absolutely love, Intuitive Eating, by Laura Thomas. I don’t know if you’ve… I think she’s an English nutritionist. But yeah, she’s on Instagram, so if anyone wants to follow her. And yeah, I just started doing a ton of reading. Instagram was pretty much my best friend. I completely diversified my feed and I think that’s so important when you are going through recovery. You have to have a diverse Instagram feed because you don’t actually realize the content you’re consuming.

You may think it’s harmless and you’re scrolling through these photos, but if you’re looking at the same body like after each other, it’s just, it can be damaging to your mental health. And it was damaging for me, just looking at like, fitspo accounts and just these flat stomachs. It was flat stomach after flat stomach. And I just knew I had to start consuming more diverse content. So I started, yeah, following more diverse accounts. And then I created my own account as well. And I started sharing kind of my experience. And I think that’s actually been therapy for me as well, sharing my experience with other people. I also started journaling a lot, asking myself just questions.

I would, yeah, I guess type into Google journaling questions to ask yourself in recovery, just something as simple as that. And there’s so much free content out there. And you’ve just got to utilize it because it’s actually really really great to have all this free content. And it’s just surrounding yourself with the right people. I started speaking out. I had never spoken about it before with my family, friends, like in relationships. I just never, it’s always been a really taboo subject and I think the minute I opened up to my mum, she kind of knew that I’d struggled and been through all of this, but we’d never actually spoken about it to a deep extent. And I think the minute I did, I just realized how powerful that was and how important that was to have support and people around you who are going to be there and they understand, they’re like compassionate and kind about it as well.

Because it can be so scary opening up, especially for the first time. And it’s hard because you don’t know how they’re going to take it. You don’t know if they’re going to understand it. And it’s hard sometimes for you to explain it. If someone’s never been through it, it’s really hard to be able to explain it sometimes, especially at the beginning when you don’t quite understand it yourself. So I’m sure you’ve heard this when people say, well, why can’t you just eat? Why can’t you just go and have that donut and just then forget about it and not feel guilty afterwards? It’s just not as simple as that. Like, you’ve got these thoughts in your head which are dictating everything that you do. They’re controlling every move that you make when it comes to food or exercise.

And a lot of the time it’s so hard to say no and I think one of the things that came up with me in therapy was when I stopped listening to those thoughts and I was eating the doughnut if I wanted the doughnut, I was eating after 8 p.m. if I was hungry, I was telling my therapist like I feel really out of control and she was like that’s normal. It’s so normal to feel out of control at first because for so long you have been controlled by all of these rules that you have put in place, all of these thoughts that you’ve been having and you’ve been listening to, that’s been controlling you. This feeling of loss and control, this is actually you gaining back that control, but you’re going going to feel a little bit lost at first because it’s the unknown. And we’re all pretty scared of the unknown, aren’t we?

Because we’re conditioned to play it safe, we’re conditioned to do the right, well, stick to what you know, I guess, and not change, because change is scary for a lot of us. So I think the minute I kind of spoke to my therapist and understood that, okay, I’m not losing control, I’m actually gaining it back, and it will feel that way the more I keep doing this, then yeah, that really helped me, knowing that.

Ryann

Absolutely, I mean, it’s like a slow building confidence train in the sense of, you know, you have these little things that you hold onto that boost your confidence and show you, wait, like, I can eat after eight and nothing happened and that’s what gives you the courage to like do something a little bit harder and a little bit harder and that’s why I really take a moment with all of my clients and everybody that reaches out on social media like let’s celebrate those little wins because that’s what really builds to create these lasting changes where you’re like I can have this and have the confidence to be like, I know I’m gonna be okay. And I love everything that you mentioned about the mindset stuff. I think that is everything. All of that inner work is necessary in healing our relationship with the food.

I always tell people it really doesn’t have anything to do with your food and everything to do with the way that you think about food and the way that you behave around food. Now with that said, there is, you know, clearly an element of food that plays into it. And at the end of the day, binge eating is a response to restriction. So as you started to learn more about nutrition and you started doing this inner work, what changes did you start making with food and what did you notice with your binges as you started to do that?

Lauren

Yeah, so I think the first major thing that I really learned was carbs are not the enemy. And I lived on a low carb diet for years and I used to tell people, tell myself as well my body just runs best on a low-carb high-fat diet and that was like…

Ryann

Oh my gosh, yes I used that one so many times!

Lauren

Yes, and looking back I’m like oh my gosh my body did not thrive on a low-carb high-fat diet and since incorporating carbs into pretty much every single meal that I eat now. My body has never felt better. I have never felt better to be honest. And little rules like I had so many so not eating after 8 p.m. was a big one for me. So I started challenging myself and I think the main thing for me when I was challenging myself I had to, it’s no good challenging yourself once and then being like, okay, I’ve done it, moving on to the next thing. You have to continually challenge yourself.

Ryann

Oh my gosh, yes.

Lauren

Doing it like week after week, because just doing it once, you’re not healing that. You’ve just allowed yourself that one day to eat after 8 p.m. and then you’re going straight back into restriction mode. So it was, if I do have a challenge, to work on that, or sorry, if I do have a food rule, work on that food rule multiple times until I really feel like, okay, I’ve got the hang of this one, like I can move on to the next one now, which is the same with fear foods as well. If I had a fear food, I would make sure that I ate it multiple times before then moving on to the next food or kind of switching it up, moving on to the next food, then going back to the other one and just switching things up so I knew that I was actually getting over it. I wasn’t just allowing myself it one day.

So I think we can sometimes fall into that trap of, okay, this one day I’m going to just allow myself all the foods that I’ve not allowed myself and then fall back into, okay, I’ve had all of those foods, I’ve done really well, I’m not restricting again. And sometimes you don’t quite know it, because I think for a few years I kind of told myself, I’m just being healthy. I’m going to say no to that dessert because I’m just being healthy. And I was seen as the healthy one, the clean eating one. And I think that was quite detrimental as well, because I was seen as that. So when I did eat something which was considered bad, which there are no good or bad foods, I now want to say, but something that I would have previously considered bad, I felt really judged by the people around me. And it was probably just me, and that was something that I had to work on.

But if I was out with friends or out with family and I had dessert, I just felt like everyone was like, oh, my gosh, Lauren is having dessert. This is unheard of. I can’t believe it. And then that would make me feel, oh, well, I’m not going to eat it now. I would then get my back up. So that was something that I knew I definitely had to work through, which is now I think it’s so important not to comment on people’s food choices and what they’re eating. You just don’t know what is going on with them internally. I feel like I’ve completely forgotten the question that you asked in the past.

Ryann

That’s okay, there were so many good things in there. I love how you brought some insight into challenging those food fears and those food rules and just the reality that we can’t just do a one and done with those. And I always say, you know, I thought when I challenged these food fears and these food rules, it meant that I was going to have to have these now every single day forever. And it took me a while to recognize that’s not the case. Just because I’m challenging eating after 8pm, that doesn’t mean that I always have to eat after 8pm. Or just because I’m challenging having Oreos or whatever the case may be, that doesn’t mean that I have to have a cookie every single day. It’s just getting yourself to a place where it’s like, if that is what you want or that’s the only option, you’re going to be okay.

And it’s no longer a big deal. I also love how much awareness you just brought to the fact of how sneaky our inner critic and our like disordered eating voice can be in the sense of, I know for me, like I very innocently would be like, I run better on carbs, or I just feel better when I eat this way, or I just don’t really like that food, or, you know, I get sick when you put butter on any, like these things that I would innocently say so deceptively, just trying so bad to get out of these things out of fear with it being a total lie. A total lie. And calling yourself out on that is hard and so necessary but I know for me too and why I love how you literally said like the thoughts that you would say to yourself is I used to think I was the only one that thought those things.

And it was so powerful for me to hear that other people did the same things as me, which, you know, is, is half the support right there. Like just hearing somebody else has been through that or has thought that way or done that is so validating. So when you started to recover and work on you. Did your body change and if it did how did you cope with that?

Lauren

Yeah so from the age I mean when I was very first all of this started happening at the age of like 14 my weight completely dropped and then when I went to university I guess I gained a little bit of weight back but it wasn’t overly noticeable and I didn’t like it wasn’t as noticeable that anyone would kind of comment on it but then I don’t think that was recovery for me. That was recovery to a certain extent that was at the age of like 18 so I was going from bulimia and literally starving myself to at that stage I was eating like an apple a day or a cereal bar and an apple or something like that to then these disordered eating patterns and the rules at the age of like 18.

So at that age, yeah my body I wouldn’t say changed overly when I went into that transition but over the past year of what I would now call my true recovery stage, yes my body has changed. It’s definitely, my hips are a lot wider, stomach is not as flat as what it was this time last year. I have had to throw away a lot of old clothes. So last year I actually bought quite a lot of gym stuff at the start of COVID. I think everyone was just buying comfy stuff and gym clothes. So pretty much all of the sports bras that I bought have been thrown away. And at first it was so upsetting and I really beat myself up about it and I think I could so easily have said to myself I’m going to hold on to this and one day I will fit into it. And that would have been such a lie to myself because I just know that I won’t be fitting into those clothes again. And I just know it would have been detrimental to my health to have kept them as well because if I accidentally forget one pair of shorts that I try on, they don’t fit me, and then six months time I’m trying them on again and I’ve forgotten, oh, they didn’t fit me, it’s then going to just go back to that same initial and felt shit about myself. So yeah, I threw them all away.

There was a lot of summer clothes I threw away and I just had a nice shopping spree and just bought myself a bunch of nice new clothes and I think that was, yeah, that helped a lot because I bought clothes that I knew would fit me. I went one size up so I knew they were going to fit me and you just feel good like when you’re trying on clothes and they actually fit you They you just feel good about yourself and it does not matter what size the clothes are It really doesn’t and I know when I used to go shopping with my sister She would refuse to buy a size like a medium over a small She would literally put the clothes back on the shelf and refuse to buy the coat, the dress or whatever it was if it didn’t if it didn’t fit her if it was a small and when I think back it’s just ridiculous.

It does not matter what size clothes we’re wearing as long as we feel good and we like what we look like when we’re wearing them. I think that’s the main thing, like feeling good. If we don’t feel good in what we’re wearing, then we’ve got to change it. And I think I saw a quote and it was, I actually shared it on my Instagram today, clothes are not made to fit your body, your body is made to fit the clothes.

Ryann

Okay, you don’t exist to fit your clothes, your clothes exist to fit you. That’s so beautiful.

Lauren

But yes, I know for a fact, my body is going to keep changing as well, and I’m like I’ve definitely got comfortable with that

Ryann

So what? What helped you get comfortable with that? I mean that is not easy especially with you battling this for Roughly 10 years like what helped you kind of stay positive and stay aligned with your why and keep pushing forward as your body did change?

Lauren

I think for me it’s all about the mindset work. Like I said, going to therapy over the last three months has literally changed the game for me. It has helped me in so many ways that I just didn’t even think was possible. Even when I, my very first session, I was still very sceptical and I am that person that always thinks I can do it alone. I always think I don’t need support, I don’t need the help of others, I can do this. And the minute I actually let go of that control that I was having and allowed someone else in to help me, it completely changed the game for me. And one thing that she said to me, which really stuck with me, is you have to get comfortable with being uncomfortable.

And if you aren’t uncomfortable, you’re not growing, you’re not progressing, you’re not doing this right, I want you to be uncomfortable as you’re going through your recovery, which sucks. No one wants to be uncomfortable. No one, of course no one does. No one wants to have to sit there with a bloated belly and feel all of those feelings you’re feeling right now with a really full belly. Like I used to hate that feeling of being full, so I would avoid meals like the plague, and which is why I also avoided carbs. I thought I was intolerant to so many different foods, which I’ve now learned I’m not. It was simply because I wasn’t introducing those foods into my diet that, of course, my belly is going to bloat up the minute I do eat those foods because it’s just not used to it.

So I did struggle as well with really bad IBS over the years and that’s definitely calmed down ever since, yeah, for the past year since I’ve been adding more variety into my diet, that’s really helped with all IBS symptoms and bloating massively. It was hard at first because of course you’ve got to sit with that uncomfort but the more you do it the easier it does become. And I do a lot of meditation, so I think that’s helped. I do self-love meditations, affirmations as well. I love affirmations. And I always come back to, what would 80-year-old me think? Would 80-year-old me look back on my life and think, thank God I went to that gym session on 23rd of July. Thank God I didn’t eat that donut. I always think, what am I going to be thinking in 60 years’ time?

Am I going to look back on my life and think, oh my gosh, I have spent my entire life hating my body, not living my life because I’ve been so scared to go on adventures or spontaneous trips or socialise with friends because of the calories and the, I don’t know the unknown of what food that I would be eating or am I going to look back on my life and think I lived a bloody good life because I took a risk and I went out there and I healed that relationship with food and my body. So I have as my phone screensaver. What would 80 year old you think? I’m going to butcher this as well. I’ve got my phone over there. Well, yeah, it’s something about 18 year old me and what would she think if she looked back on your life? So that is my why. That’s why I always come back to. And I never want to live my life knowing that I could have lived it better.

Ryann

That is so powerful. And it’s one of those things that really helps shift us back into alignment because just as you said this process is not easy. I always repeat over and over on my page you know the reality is overcoming binge eating disordered eating is simple. It really is simple but it is not easy. It is not easy, right? We know that it comes down to allowing all foods to fit, letting go of the restriction, and being nicer to ourselves, but that is not easy. And it’s a journey, and it’s a process, and I think that, you know, all of those inner workings that you talked about is so necessary. Now you talked about affirmations. Are there any affirmations that you love or any that you said or a way that you used affirmations that you found were really helpful?

Lauren

Yeah I mean I love writing affirmations on post-it notes and just sticking them either to my bedside table, or I’ll stick them to my mirror, in my bathroom, so when I’m brushing my teeth in the morning, my family think I’m crazy, and they’re like, what are you doing? But I think they’ve gone bored of them as well, so they will say them to themselves too. But yeah, I love things like, you can’t live a full life on an empty stomach, your worth is not defined by the number on the scales, which was a massive one for me because I think if you’ve been through a tough relationship with your body or food, weighing yourself is something that is like ingrained into us along with like BMI and being underweight, overweight or neutral according to BMI, which we’ve now discovered is not very accurate at all.

And I used to weigh myself morning, afternoon, evening. Really beat myself up about it if in the evening I weighed more than the morning. But of course, you’re going to weigh more. And also, I’ve got some written down here, so I’ll just say a few. So it took me so long to kind of understand myself beyond my appearance. And I think as a teenager, you’re so caught up in everything, like with your peers and stuff. You’re constantly comparing yourself against your peers, and you’re really aware of what you look like and your body and everything. And you just, you struggle to, I guess, look at things from an outsider’s point of view. It’s all about you and what you’re going through and what you look like.

So I think the minute I kind of became more aware and started observing these thoughts that I was having and understood that, okay, I bring a lot more to the table than just my appearance, then that really, really helps. It brings more confidence as well, I think, into any situation that you’re going into. Because I think when I was younger, I would constantly, if I was introduced to new people, I’d think, oh, what are they going to think I look like? What are they? And I would instantly go to my looks or my body. What, are they going to think I’m pretty? Are they going to think I’m not? Like, it would all, it would be all about the looks. And I think now I’m like, okay, are they going to think that I’ve got a good mind. Are they gonna think that I’m kind or compassionate?

Are they going to like me for my personality and all the other things which I now think is so much more important than Your appearance so that’s a massive one for me I have to say that to myself quite a lot at the beginning. So I yeah like that one I am mentally and physically stronger every day. I Accept and love my body exactly the way it is. I am prioritizing my health. I am grateful for everything my body does for me, which is another massive one. And I think as I started learning more about nutrition, I’ve been, for my first year, I’ve been learning all about the science and all the systems in the body.

And that’s really kind of put things into perspective for me and made me realize, oh my gosh, like our bodies are amazing. Everything they do for us just to keep us alive is amazing. And even if we’re not working out one day, we still need to feed our bodies because it needs that food, it needs the calories just to carry out its biological functions. So even if you’re having a rest day, you’ve got to feed your body. And sometimes you want more food on the rest days. And that’s definitely the case for me. I actually always eat more on my rest days than the days where I am working out. So yeah, I do love an affirmation.

Ryann

Oh my gosh, so many good ones and I love that you ended on that gratitude one because for me that was the most helpful thing to cultivating more body love love, especially on days where I wasn’t happy with my body. Moving from so much aesthetic to what does my body allow me to do? And also, really looking at, like, and taking a moment to appreciate, like, all of the things that I get to do because of my body. now it’s summertime in Jackson and we have the most epic hikes here and at the end of the hike I always just have this like very kind of like emotional moment where not like emotional like I break down but just this moment where it’s like this is so cool that I get to see this and not everybody does but I do my legs brought me here.

Like I’m only here because of my legs. And like, thank you legs, like thank you, like that is amazing, so amazing. And I think that that gratitude, oh, it goes so far, especially on those days where it’s like, I don’t love it or I’m not happy. And I think too, like what you said with the calories being energy, I know in my mind, which is really funny too, because if you Google the definition of calories, it quite literally is a unit of energy. And so I know I work with a lot of my clients, like literally replacing the word calorie with energy and just saying, do you want more energy or less energy? And like realizing, you know, even on rest days or days where you are doing these epic things like instead of being So focused on the food or if I eat less and maybe I’ll lose weight it Turning into well, I want more energy to be able to be more in my life and that Oh my gosh, help me make peace with food. So so much

So my last question for you, and I know I could chat with you all day but just for interest of time for Anybody that is currently struggling with their body through recovery the changes that come along whether it is Just a fluctuation because their body is just getting used to the more food or it is their body putting on a little bit more weight, because that’s where this person sits at naturally. And letting go of that smaller body, or letting go of that old body, and really struggling with that, what advice would you have, or what would you say to them?

Lauren

I think the very first thing would be, you’ve got to follow the right accounts on Instagram, if you have Instagram, because the content, you’ve got to look at what content you’re consuming, because we have been conditioned by society into thinking that thin is more attractive, and you’ve got to look at why. Why have we decided that as a society? And it’s because of the content we’ve been consuming, it’s because of the media only showing certain body types, which is actually, these body types are unrealistic and impossible for so many people out there to even achieve. And then when you look at these models as well, a lot of them, they’re suffering the same things, disordered eating, eating disorders. They’ve been through it all. So I think it’s really look at what content are you consuming. Don’t expect to get it right all the time. You’re going to have setbacks in recovery.

You’re going to have days where you listen to the thoughts that you’re having. You listen to maybe it’s an eating disorder thought that’s telling you you shouldn’t be eating dinner. Some days you’re going to listen to it and it’s okay, but make sure you’re observing that, you observe why you ended up listening to it, and make sure that you know what you’re going to do next time to not listen to it and to get stronger. And the more that you don’t listen to those thoughts, the stronger you get and the quieter that voice becomes. Because I still have the thoughts, I’ll be honest, they are still there but I just push them down. I know that I’m the one in control and I don’t listen to them. So it’s just knowing you are the one in control, not your eating disorder thoughts.

Seek professional help as well. I honestly think if you are going through anything, even if you think you’re not bad enough. Because I think a lot of people don’t seek help because they don’t think they are bad enough or ill enough, sick enough. So even if you think that, seek help. Tell someone about it, someone that you can trust, because it will, honestly, it will do you so much good to speak it out with someone. And it will make you feel less alone, it’ll make you feel more understood as well and especially following accounts like yours which really really helped me as well on my journey. Yeah make sure you’re following kind of anti-diet and health at every size accounts and always yeah be kind to yourself if your body is changing it’s not the end of the world.

You need to look at it in perspective with, okay, am I happy in the body that I have? And I’m thin, or the body you had before when you were thin, you were listening to your eating disorder thoughts, were you happy? A lot of the time it’s a no, because you’re not happy then. So what’s the worst? What’s the worst that can happen? Okay, you put on some weight, but are you now happy? Yes, you’re living a more fulfilled life. You’ve got more brain space to think of other things, think of your friends, think of going on trips and spontaneous trips and adventures and go hiking, like you said. I don’t know about you, but back in the day, I would not have had the energy to go on a two hour, three hour, four hour hike, I don’t know. I just would not have the energy.

Ryann

Oh my gosh, no. My life was literally eat as little as I could, do the workout that I quote, had to do, and then I would literally sit down all day. I had no energy at all. It was do the bare minimum But get everything I quote had to do to lose weight and that was it if somebody was like let’s go for a walk or let’s go do this or I Used to live by the water and if a friend was like, let’s go swim the ocean I’d be like no, I already did what I had to do for today, no. And like how sad is that? And looking back on all that time, it just, it makes me so sad, which is why this is so important to me. And I am so appreciative and I think to wrap everything up, this is what would 80 year old you want to remember? Have that on repeat, make it your screensaver. Lauren’s going to give me her screensaver so I can post it. And that is your new mantra. Lauren, where can everybody find you if they want to reach out, if they want to chat with you more? Give us all the deets. deep.

Lauren

Absolutely, so you can find me at fillyourbowl underscore on Instagram that is pretty much the only place I hang out at the minute.

Ryann

Yay and I will have that linked below. Thank you so much again Lauren this was amazing and I so appreciate the conversation and I am so proud of you. You are such a blessing and such an inspiration. And I cannot wait to see, I mean, this is only a year of you in, where you’re gonna be five years from now when you’re 80.

Lauren

Oh, I know. Thank you so much. I know, I’m excited for the journey too. I think that’s what’s important as well for anyone who’s in. It’s an exciting journey because you’re getting your life back.