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Connect with Kristin

📲 Instagram:  @kristinvora.nutrition

🖥 Website: www.kristinvoranutrition.com

Episode Transcript

Ryann

Thank you, Kristen, so much for coming on the Food Freedom Lab. I am so excited to have you here today.

Kristen

Thanks! I’m so excited to be here.

Ryann

So before we dive in, I would love to do just a few icebreaker questions so everyone can get a better idea about who you are. So if you were going to describe who you are in three words, what would you say?

Kristen

Oh, hmm. Oh my gosh, that’s a hard question. It is, it is. I like gas on him, like I don’t even know what I would say. Um, let’s see. I think I would say that I’m very passionate. I’m very passionate about what I do. I would say I’m energetic. And then I would say that I’m a, I’m an introvert.

Ryann

I love it. I love it. Crunchy or smooth peanut butter?

Kristen

Smooth all the way.

Ryann

And what is your favorite thing you put it on?

Kristen

Lately I’ve been doing a peanut butter on toast with some bananas.

Ryann

Yum! Love that.

Kristen

It’s my go-to breakfast.

Ryann

Love it, love it. And how many alarms do you snooze in the morning before you wake up?

Kristen

Oh, this would be a question for my husband, I guess. I probably, I never wake up on time. Sometimes I’m like, you need to wake me up when you get up, but I don’t know, four maybe. And then I still don’t get up when my kids wake me up. So that’s what I get.

Ryann

Whatever works, whatever works. I love that. So for anybody who doesn’t know you yet, doesn’t know your story, will you give us just a brief overview of your story? What got you interested in the work that you’re doing now, your relationship with food and your body, all the good stuff to where you are today?

Kristen

It’s been a really long journey to be honest. So, but in terms of like becoming a dietician, I think I’ve always been interested in health and science. I know it sounds very cliche, but it never felt like worked to me like other things did. And then fast forward, I went to college and I didn’t have a major declared. And when I was there, I decided like, oh, maybe I’ll go into nursing. And they didn’t have a school of nursing. So I was like, okay, I’ll do nutrition. And that’s kind of, it just kind of fell onto my lap. And I feel like while I’ve always been interested in it, it hasn’t been until like the last three, four, five years that I’ve really started to really love it. So I think it’s just because I found what I enjoy doing.

Ryann

I love that. And have you ever personally struggled with food or body or is it more just been like an interest thing and you’ve found that passion?

Kristen

Oh yeah, absolutely. I think that that’s probably a factor in why I chose dietetics, right? It’s actually pretty common. But yeah, in terms of like eating disorder behaviors and poor body image, yes, struggled with all of it. Late high school, mostly college. I think it was a by-product of my OCD that I had growing up, but I think that they coexisted together versus like one necessarily causing the other. But yeah, I think it really wasn’t until like I had my children that I was like, they’re a bigger fish to fry, which was my thought process. I want to start living more life rather than worrying about, I want to fit into my jeans before my babies. It’s different. It was just a new level of acceptance for me. I feel like there was always some form of maybe like disordered behaviors that kind of just like resolve themselves over time as I kind of figured myself out.

Ryann

Yeah and what I love about you is you bring in that OCD element which I feel like I really want to dive into today because I think that’s one of those things that not a lot of people really talk about from like a personal perspective and I so appreciate that you do. So would you give us just like a brief overview of what OCD actually is and what that was like for you?

Kristen

Yeah, of course. Yeah, I think there’s a lot of shame. I feel like in the last few years is when I really started talking about it and addressing the shame that I had with it. But OCD is basically, it stands for obsessive compulsive disorder. And it’s a mental health disorder that’s characterized by obsessions and compulsions, right? So the obsessions are like unwanted intrusive thoughts, images, urges that cause a lot of distress, really leave a person feeling pretty out of control. And then that’s when you get the compulsions. So you might hear, people might hear a lot about like rituals. So The compulsions are very ritualistic like you have to do X Y & Z It’s a behavior to reduce the stress that the obsession is causing and then yeah, I guess that’s a pretty basic Explanation and then the next question was how it’s affected me.

Ryann

Yeah, how did it manifest for you?

Kristen

Oh, I can’t remember a life without OCD, to be honest with you. I’m 37 now, so I can remember having, like 25 to 30 years ago, I can remember having thoughts. And I remember being like, these aren’t normal, this isn’t normal, but I also didn’t want anyone else to know. And most of my OCD, I mean, it was pretty intense. It was like, I did rituals because I had this intense fear that my parents and my grandmother would die. So, you know, all kids kind of have that sort of fear, right, to some degree, but it was, and I guess that’s what differentiates the OCD diagnosis, because everyone has obsessions and compulsions, right, it’s just the extent to which it interferes with your life. And that it did. I can remember, like, I think I was maybe in the sixth grade. I remember watching Oprah. This is a very clear memory I have. And they did a special on OCD.

And I looked at my mom and I was like, that’s what I have. And she’s like, no, no, no, you’re great. You’re fine. Nothing’s wrong. I did a really good job of hiding it. But I think it also was from the point of view of like, there’s nothing wrong. Like, she’s okay. She’s fine, right? So also therapy I think wasn’t necessarily a thing back then at least not in like the family that I grew up in per se. So I probably didn’t start therapy, which I knew I had OCD, I always knew that I had it, but I think I was always kind of in denial, like, no, it’s just anxiety, you just have anxiety, which is part of the disorder, right?

Probably when I was in my late 20s, but it has fully changed my life. I had a therapist when I lived in Chicago who really changed my life. And then since moving to New Orleans, I’ve been consistently going every other week, almost never cancel. Even if I want to, I don’t do it, maybe for like three years now. So therapy has really made all the difference for me.

Ryann

Can you give us an example of what you mean by like rituals?

Kristen

Yeah, so a lot of people probably like what they think of when they think of rituals is like the hand washing, the flickering of the light switches, obsessively checking to make sure that like appliances are turned off or doors are locked. And kind of like I said earlier, everybody has like a tendency to recheck, right? But it’s the extent at which it interferes with your life. So like not sleeping because I was afraid that the door was unlocked, even though I checked it like a hundred times, right? And then there was a phase where I kept unlocking because I feared being locked in the house, which is kind of strange. But I did have this like, one of like, the really like weird things like, like OCD is like, it’s hard to describe, right? Whereas like, if I touched something that was like, quote unquote, bad, I had to wash my hands to like, get rid of the bad, right?

So that whole virtual would be like washing hands, flicking the light switch, stepping in and out of the bathroom. And then if it didn’t, like if the light switch didn’t sound right, then I’d have to start all over and do it again. And then also I think an important thing to point out is like, I knew it wasn’t logical. Like I knew that something wasn’t right. And I knew that like I should stop, but I just couldn’t, right? So I think that’s the hard part. So frustrating. I would get so angry like one of them, for example, was a doorknob. And so like if that door was closed, like that particular doorknob, I just wouldn’t go in that door because I didn’t want to do my ritual. So those are the kind of things I guess. And it morphed into different things throughout the years. I think I was probably more predisposed to having an eating disorder.

And then once that got figured out, it was more like health anxieties to the extent of, like, writing maximum character MyChart messages to a doctor when I had a migraine, even though I had migraines, that something could have been a lot more wrong, right? I also think, I said this earlier, I did a really good job of hiding it. I mean, I think my sisters would think otherwise. They’d be like, yeah, we heard you like on and off the light switches, washing your hands. We just, you know, it was just like me, right? But yeah, it’s really the rituals, they are very time consuming, right? And then the obsessions can cause significant anxiety, right? Overwhelming anxiety.

Ryann

So I so appreciate you sharing that. That’s super helpful. Going off of that, what is the difference between like true OCD and then like just having the compulsion to count calories or to weigh yourself or where do those lines kind of cross or they don’t cross? Where it’s like, okay, you’re experiencing a disorder behavior and like these are like ritualistic things of maybe OCD.

Kristen

Yeah, so I think there’s a lot of commonalities. It’s pretty striking between like OCD and eating disorders, right? They all kind of revolve in a sense around compulsions and obsessions. I think the main difference is an eating disorder. I like to think of them, and again, I’m not like a therapist who specializes in OCD, but I like to think of them on a spectrum. Like they’re all like anxiety disorders, right?

Ryann

Yeah.

Kristen

Places. So an eating disorder is motivated by like body image and intense fear of weight gain. And that can morph into any behaviors. Like for example, for someone who is suffering from anorexia, it may be like tearing food into small pieces in an effort to restrict with the intention of losing weight, right? With someone who may be bulimic, it could be overeating and feeling that loss of control, and then their compulsion or ritual would be purging, right? OCD, it’s not body image related. It’s more like contamination and those intrusive thoughts that don’t necessarily, like they can deal with food, right? And I think that’s how they can overlap. So someone with OCD could have eating disorder behaviors, but someone with OCD can definitely have eating disorder behaviors, and someone with an eating disorder can have OCD rituals around food, if you will. Typically someone-

Ryann

Got it.

Kristen

Yeah. So typically someone who has an eating disorder and has OCD behaviors, when they’re in recovery from their eating disorder, the OCD behaviors kind of also, you’re in recovery from those as well.

Ryann

So with your kind of indirect overlap, but like experiencing OCD and working through it, what helped you kind of manage your anxiety? Like what were some of the skills or the things that you worked on to kind of control those intrusive thoughts or calm down those intrusive thoughts for someone who is listening right now and would love to hear just some hope or some skills?

Kristen

Absolutely. Um, I would say therapy, just like going to therapy, being open in therapy. It’s not the place to feel shame. It’s a place to work on the shame, right? But I would just say, like, my family in general and my husband are huge support systems. Like, sometimes they might notice that I’m, like, kind of spiraling, and they might be like, look, this is what’s happening, and I just want you to be aware in case you’re not. But mostly it’s me. I’m very, like, I think it’s important to reach out to others, to not hide it, so that you can openly talk about it, which makes you feel so much better. Another thing might be like literally just going for a walk, right? That could be helpful too. Listen to a good podcast, good music.

Ryann

Yeah, I love all of those things. What about, what was it like for you when you did kind of open up to your mom about this after having that Oprah moment of like, this is what I have, and her kind of pushing it under the rug to being like, no, this is a real thing. Like, when did that happen and how did that conversation kind of transpire?

Kristen

Um, it didn’t really happen, honestly. Yeah. So again, this someone with OCD might be able to resonate with this, but, um, it sounds like very magical thinking, but at some point, and I, it’s all like very blurry. I can’t remember how old I was, but I was just like sick of doing the rituals. I knew something was wrong with me. Um, and I was like, okay, I’m not going to do the rituals anymore. January 1st or whatever year is a clean slate. And I like convinced myself that if I continued to do them, like. The rituals would then make like my parents die, which I was, what I was like trying to keep from happening.

Ryann

Okay.

Kristen

And I’ve discussed this in therapy and my therapist is just like you were just always fighting to be okay like There’s there’s a resiliency in you that you just always are gonna like be okay, but of course Those he didn’t go away. Oh, she didn’t go away right it just morphed into other things like maybe Concentrating on food too much or school work rewriting notes too many times so it’s always been there. But it hasn’t been until my adult life that I’ve, it’s been stable. And I think that’s just like me going out of my way to seek therapy.

Ryann

Yeah, yeah, no, I think that that’s really helpful to know. And I think that, you know, that conversation is hard, but I think that your point about just like being vulnerable about it and being open about it can be really helpful in eliminating that shame, because I think that this is something that absolutely has a ton of stigma around it, which is really unfortunate. And I think a lot of that has to do with media’s representation of it and, you know, just throwing it around with such a loose term. And so I feel like it’s really helpful to hear your story, but also know that, like, this is something that you recognized and you were frustrated by and it was like something greater than you where it was like, okay, like I need Extra help.

Kristen

Yeah, absolutely. I just I guess at some point you get fed up. I’m not really sure that’s my experience Really like at some point I guess you could also like call that your breaking point, right? We’re like I was just like I don’t want to live this way anymore I need someone to help me not live this way anymore and manage it.

Ryann

Yeah. Yeah, so for anyone right now who is currently like struggling with food stuff with OCD tendencies, whether that be compulsions to weigh or compulsions to count calories, what would you recommend to help kind of separate themselves from that urge?

Kristen

Yeah, that’s a great question. I think I would just, I would start off by making sure this person had a treatment team, right? So making sure that they have a therapist, either one that, particularly if there’s an eating disorder, one that specializes in eating disorder or OCD, but they’re probably going to need a psychiatrist, right? A dietician to address the ED behaviors, but that would be more so like helping them creating a meal plan together and what it really comes down to in terms of nutrition and getting them to stop weighing themselves and counting calories is really establishing that trust.

Like I’m here to help you. And I need you to trust me to do what’s okay for you. And so I’m going to be in charge of the calories that you have per day. day and I need you to trust me that if anything is really happening I will adjust it for you right if there’s significant weight gain if you’re not gaining weight if there’s weight loss right like we will adjust it and figure it out together but you knowing the calories and the number on the scale isn’t helping you at all so you need to let someone else manage that for you.

Ryann

Yeah yeah and I love that trust element that you bring into it because I think that one of the huge things with anxiety is like experiencing this overwhelming worry through lack of trust, lack of trust of what’s gonna happen, the unknown, just this uncertainty and being able to kind of just like surrender and trust something or someone.

Kristen

Yeah, and that usually happens when you get to the breaking point, right? Like I have nothing else to do but let someone else help me. And so when someone’s more open and receptive.

Ryann

Yeah, yeah, absolutely. So from there, I mean, you work with eating disorder people, right, like as a dietician?

Kristen

Yep. So I work part-time at a mental health hospital. It’s called River Oaks. It’s in New Orleans. I work, there’s a eating disorder trauma unit. So I work on that unit about 15, 20 hours a week. And then I have my own practice on the side too. So inpatient is obviously people who are diagnosed with eating disorders. Outpatient, I do have eating disorder patients too but I really have a lot more patients who, they don’t fit criteria for an eating disorder, but they’re really looking to like live more life and not be so preoccupied with food, to have that so-called food freedom, right? And so that, and then work on the body image stuff too, from a nutrition perspective is something I really like to do.

Ryann

Yeah.

Kristen

So I do disordered eating and eating disorders, and they’re both challenging in very different ways.

Ryann

Can you briefly differentiate between eating disorder and disordered eating?

Kristen

Sure. This is something I also like to think of on a spectrum, right? So it’s like, think of intuitive eating on one side of the spectrum and then eating disorder on the other. And then in the middle is like chronic dieting and disordered eating. So an example of like a disordered eating thought could be like you’re not allowed to eat at night, like after 7 p.m. You’re. The food you eat turns to fat and you gain weight, right, is a common diet culture theme is not eating at night. where what I tell my patients is like, if you go to bed hungry, then you’re not gonna sleep well. You’re probably gonna be thinking about food. You’re gonna wake up in the morning thinking about food.

Plus you haven’t slept well. So your hunger and fullness hormones are off. And so then you’ve like, just like setting yourself up for a day of chaos when all you had to do was eat the snack before. And that can be hard for some people, like you can’t just say, like, just eat, right? But when you can use that logic to empower people, I think that’s how you can get people to really challenge themselves. Like, the outcome is worse than just eating the snack.

Ryann

So when does it go from just disordered eating to, okay, we’re working with an eating disorder?

Kristen

That would be, it’s kind of, I guess, mirrors OCD and the level in which it affects your life, right? How much, how intrusive it is on your life, and it can be really debilitating. One that’s like really obvious, right, is someone who’s anorexic and clearly is very thin and isn’t, you know, fits that ideal type of what someone would envision someone suffering from anorexia to look like. But I mean, there is definitely not a look to eating disorders from my experience and that they’re not straightforward diagnoses. There could be someone who has anorexia, but they also have like binge purge behaviors. And so I think, yeah, I guess to answer your question is just how much is it affecting your physical health and your mental health and how much is it affecting your life? Are you not able to do other things? Is it interfering?

Ryann

Yeah, such a powerful question and one of those where it’s like that can kind of be the trigger throw in the towel moment as well where it’s like, okay, at this moment I’ve realized how much I’ve missed out on because of this. And now I’m realizing how much it’s affecting my life.

Kristen

Yeah, absolutely. Which is why I just think it’s so powerful to, once you free up space in your brain that’s not like preoccupied with food in your body image, there’s just so much more room to figure out the things that you love and have time to do things that you’re passionate about, right? So I think honestly, that’s how I fell into like the niche that I’m in now is because I had that open space to try something new and really to dig deep.

Ryann

Yeah, yeah. From what you’ve seen in your eating disorder work, I would love to know just from your own experience, how long on average does it take for someone to like recover? I feel like that’s a very common question that I get, but I don’t work specifically with eating disorders. I work with disordered eating. So I would just love to know with your own experience, like what is the average timeline that you see?

Kristen

Oh, it completely varies. I mean, there are some people that unfortunately will be chronic and it’s just managing some, like what’s the lesser of the behaviors, right? Right. For I mean, for someone with a diagnosable eating disorder, it could be a year, it could be two years. It’s not if you need inpatient treatment and then transition to like partial hospitalization and then outpatient. A lot of people relapse. There’s definitely lapses. Right. And then there’s relapses, too. So it really is. I mean, it’s a it’s a constant like desire to recover, I think, whereas someone I work with, and it might be like it gets better sometimes, and you only see them monthly, or maybe they’re done for a while, and then they come back to check in. And I noticed that with disordered eating, too. I typically, they might be like three to six months that I work with them, and we might go from weekly to biweekly to monthly to random check-ins too.

Ryann

That’s super helpful. I think too, like just having the expectation that it does take a while. And I know that that can feel like very discouraging at first when you hear like year to year, but in reality, like when you think about how long you’ve been struggling with this, I know for me, like knowing that I had struggled for seven years and being like, okay, what is one year? What is one year? What is two years of this to have the rest of my life back? And to me, that was worth it. And it was just like taking it day by day, where it’s like, I’ve heard the phrase or the analogy, like eating an elephant one bite at a time, where it’s like, okay, like if thinking about the whole year, two years is like so overwhelming, let’s just think about today. Like what can you do today? What matters today in this moment?

Kristen

Yeah. Yeah. That’s powerful.

Ryann

Yeah. Any other just like thoughts or like comments about like OCD that you wish more people knew about or anybody who is like currently struggling with that? Just like some like words of wisdom for them to hear in this moment.

Kristen

I think just I think more so like what we talked about earlier is to be like open and vulnerable, but it does take a while to get to that place, right? Where I think it’s the place when you throw in the towel. So I guess some words of encouragement would be like, it’s going to, it will get better. It does get better. You might have some days that are significantly worse. It’s not a linear journey, it’s very fluid. But make sure you find a therapist, right? That makes you feel good and feels like you’re making headway even when you do have bad days. I think that, I mean, and I think I’m biased in that, but I would be like, go get a therapist. Because my life has been so positively impacted by therapy. But yeah, just know that you’re gonna have good and bad days.

Ryann

Totally. I know that this probably isn’t as helpful coming from me as it would be from you, because I am a therapist, so I feel like I’m kind of biased. I would love to know from you, like when you were looking for a therapist, what were some things that you looked for, some things that you appreciated in different therapists? If someone is like, okay, I’m ready to take that step to find a therapist, how do I find the one that’s for me?

Kristen

Oh boy. Well, my first therapist was, I just got lucky, honestly. It was like my friend’s therapist and I was like, I’ll try her. And it was a perfect fit. I, when we, that was when we were in Chicago. So we moved to New Orleans. I didn’t have a therapist for about a year. And then finally I was like, I need a therapist. And I definitely tried two therapists through insurance, through like the health system here, and I didn’t like either of them. I just didn’t vibe with them. I think it’s very much like a relationship where you have to vibe with the person. Only. You just might not align with them. And like having that expectation, I think, is really powerful versus being like, therapy isn’t for me, right?

But I feel like what’s been helpful for me is to ask for recommendations of people who have had positive experiences with therapists. And then my current therapist, what I really like about her is she really challenges me in a way where I’m like, I don’t like her anymore. You know what I mean? But I don’t mean that. For example, like the whole reason I got into eating disorders is because I used to work at a surgical weight loss center. And I didn’t have an opinion either way, but I was like, oh my God, we are giving people eating disorders. Like the things that we are asking of them is not right. We are not treating them ethically. I mean, that’s my personal opinion from my experience. And she’s like, okay, so why don’t you get a new job? And I was like, who is she to tell me to get a new job? Why would she ever say that to me? And then I went online and I looked for jobs like a few days later and I found my job that has eating disorders like it was meant to be.

Ryann

I love that.

Kristen

Yeah.

Ryann

I love that. Yeah. It’s like that happy medium of like challenge but also feeling safe. Yeah.

Kristen

Yeah. And I definitely feel safe and I do feel like I like want to be called out on the things that I can do better. For example, like I might talk to her even non-OCD stuff like about my kids, how they might be frustrating me. And I get a really objective response like, why don’t you try this and that? And I just love getting feedback.

Ryann

Yeah, yeah. So in honor of the Food Freedom Lab, I would love to know what does food freedom mean to you?

Kristen

Food freedom to me is honestly, I guess the reoccurring theme that I keep saying is just like when you have freedom with food, you have the freedom to live your life. And what that can look like is different for everybody. Like recovery looks different for everyone, right? And so I think, yeah, so it just means like you can live more life. It looks different for everyone, right? So, like, for one person, it could be like, they get to go away to college versus going to an eating disorder treatment center, right? Moving to a big city confidently, right? Like, when you can have confidence in who you are, regardless of your body and its size and how you feel about it, that’s when the big stuff can happen. And that’s what that brings to me.

Ryann

Yeah, I love that so much. Kristen, thank you so much for sharing all of that. Where can everybody find you to connect with you more, learn more about you, or just hear all of your stuff and your work?

Kristen

Yeah, so I’m on Instagram. It’s kristenbora.nutrition. I have a website. It’s kristenboranutrition.com. And then that is pretty much it in terms of my social media presence.

Ryann

Cool. Thank you so much again. I so appreciate you and I know a lot of our listeners will as well.

Kristen

Thank you so much for having me.

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