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Connect with Katy

📲 Instagram: @kallen_cooks

Episode Transcript

Ryann

Hello, everybody. Welcome back to the Food Freedom Lab. I am so excited. I have Katy here with us today. I connected with Katy, what, like three months ago, four months ago, five months ago? Pretty recent, but since connecting with her, first of all, her content is incredible. We’ll get you connected with her after this, but she is just such a bright light sharing her story of eating disorder recovery. And when I decided to shift the realm that my podcast was going, I was like, I know I need to have Katy on. So Katy, thank you so much for being here today. I so appreciate you taking the time.

Katy

Thank you for having me. I’m so happy to be here and I can’t wait to talk to you all about it.

Ryann

Yay. So will you take us through whatever you feel comfortable with kind of the beginning where things started to shift for you, whether it was when you started to view your body in a negative way, or when you started to kind of finagle with food, the depths of it, and then when you decided to do something different.

Katy

Buckle up.

Ryann

Yeah. Okay.

Katy

Okay, I would say, I mean, I don’t even know when this started. I think honestly, for as long as I can remember, I’ve always had a conflict with my body as most females do. Just kind of growing up, the conversation is always geared towards what you look like. And I was never involved in athletics in high school or in middle school. I mean, I danced, not that that’s not athletic, but it’s different. It’s different than like being on the soccer team or the basketball team or something like that. And so I always viewed myself kind of negatively, physically in comparison to other girls that I grew up with. And I didn’t really want to make any sort of bodily changes, I would say, until I was in high school.

And it was towards the end of high school, after I had finished dancing competitively, that I was just finally like, okay, well, I’m not doing anything now, I need to start exercising. And I really got into running. I feel like running is kind of the least threatening. You can kind of do it whenever you want. You don’t have to go to a gym. And I started running every day after school. And it was like, it was very addicting. And I started to kind of lose weight a little bit and some people would notice and I just like really liked that feeling of I can do this thing, get this result and get this gratification.

So I carried that and I started my freshman year of college and I kind of let it die off a little bit as I got, you know, acclimated to being in a dorm and all of that. And then spring break was coming up. I was like, oh, I gotta get ready for this, my first college spring break. And so then the cycle kind of started over. And then I was getting up before class every day, exercising, eating quote unquote, really healthy. Well, I was very focused on my nutrition and the goal was for that bikini body for spring break. And then I got in a relationship, kind of let it go. I started into the thick of nursing school, which anybody, I mean, any medical program, as you probably know with nutrition and therapy, sucks. So then I got into the thick of that, went through a breakup, started battling mental health, got on some medication, started going to therapy, and just kind of like, I won’t say the term let myself go, but I really just laxed on anything physical because I was so focused on my mental health and just all the stress and anxiety of school.

I wasn’t sleeping more than four hours a night. I wasn’t exercising at all and I gained a lot of weight. I was like I’m living my best life. I’m 21. I’m going to the bars. I’m eating pizza. Like I was so happy but I felt like absolute garbage and it was always kind of like the joke that I had like an old person’s body. It’s like my knees hurt, my back hurt, and I was always wearing ankle breaks, my joints hurt. And I was like, eh, whatever, I’ll deal with it later. I’ll deal with it later. And so then I graduated college and I moved to St. Louis where I got my first nursing job. And I started working right before I was taking my boards and everything. And I was like, running around the unit, I’m like, breaking a sweat.

I’m like, okay, I am like, need to get something together. I’m not feeling physically healthy at all. And so there was this program through my hospital where they would pay for half of your membership of Weight Watchers. If you signed up through the hospital, I was like, oh, perfect. I’m broke. This is great. I need to lose weight, whatever. So I started doing Weight Watchers and I just kind of set this goal of I’m just going to lose like I’ll put my goal as 75 pounds but that’ll literally never happen because I’ve always been that type of person where I could like lose a little but then I’d gain a lot, lose a little gain a lot, like just a lot of yo-yoing. Anyway, so I started and I feel like when you eat so terribly and you change that, it comes off, at least for me, it comes off very quickly. And over the course of a little bit over a year, I had hit my goal of 75 pounds and I was like, oh, well, if I can do this, like I can keep going. So then I got 200 pounds and I was like, oh, well, I can keep going.

And then I ended up losing like 115 pounds and that was probably the most that I had lost. And throughout that time, I got really into cooking and I started going to pure bar classes. And then I started my Instagram page which is where we found each other. And after I got to that peak weight loss, it’s kind of when it all started crumbling because I got there and I was 22 or 23 and I was like okay all right so like I’m here I did it this is awesome now what and like how am I going to maintain this so the program changes when you go into maintenance mode in terms of like how much you’re allowed to eat and that for me was absolute hell, the maintenance period, because I was like in this living hell of fear that I was going to gain this weight back.

And after that year of maintaining, I decided that I was going to try what I call intuitive eating, which is really just doing whatever I want. And that’s how I got here. It kind of went through phases of feeling really good, losing weight, and then feeling really scared, and then going through this like rebellion period, and now I’m here. So it’s been quite, that was like a couple of years of dramatic weight loss and gradual weight gain. But I feel like overall, I’ve kind of been teetering back and forth for most of my life with my weight and my body.

Ryann

Thank you so much for sharing that. To take things back just like to the beginning, in your family growing up, like what were you taught about food and body or what was food and body like in your in your home? Like do you think that that primed any of this or was it just totally out of left field?

Katy

Well my sister and I have very opposite body types and she and I’ve just been naturally curvy and so that was always kind of like a joking point like oh you’re the big boned one she’s the slender one. So that was always you know kind of something that is funny when you hear it but then you sit with it and in terms of food my parents are amazing cooks. I’ve always like like eating and eating and eating and eating. I’m just like, oh, this is normal. Everybody eats this much. Everybody feels like absolute garbage after they eat, which is something that I’ve been like trying to unlearn as I’ve gotten older. I think it’s all things that I’ve just kind of acquired from society and social media, movies, TV.

Ryann

Yeah.

Katy

The model, like, not necessarily the models, but the people, the characters you see in TV shows growing up and in movies and their body types and then inadvertently comparing yourself to that.

Ryann

Totally. When you lost all of that weight and got to your smallest body, were you happiest then?

Katy

Initially, I think I thought I was, just externally. I was happy about the label on my clothes. I was happy about the way people treated me. I was happy about the praise that I got. I was not happy eating around anyone, going out to eat, letting anyone cook for me, which we’ve like kind of talked about. It was also in the middle of COVID. So I think another big proponent of this whole frenzy of what I went through was feeling like food and exercise were things that I could control and just really leaning into that and making that my entire life. And so in that aspect, I was like, gosh, the world is falling apart. And like, I am just, I am so thin and fit and I have my shit together. But then in retrospect, the anxiety of how am I going to maintain this when the world starts again?

I can’t work out five days a week. I can’t weigh, measure, track every single ingredient that goes into every single meal that I make. This is not feasible when I’m not home all the time when I have a life. And so that started to really weigh on me. I did start to get really frustrated with the conversation about my body, with my friends, with my family, with my coworkers. I work with a lot of women. That’s what we do. You see someone looking a little small, you’re like, oh, you look so skinny. It was like, that was me. I was the weight loss person on the unit. Cause they had seen me from when I started to the weight loss. And so that started to really get on my nerves.

Every time I would see someone, it was never like, how are you? What’s going on with you? How’s your day? It’s like, oh my God, you look amazing. You look so skinny. And I started to wonder like what, and not even just with them specifically, but just in general, what is my value outside of this?

Ryann

Oh my God. Yeah.

Katy

It just makes you like add on all this pressure that, Hey, well, if I gain this weight back, what, what does that mean for me? What does that mean for this? Platform that I’ve built based on weight loss. What does that mean for everything that I’ve preached about losing weight and these are all the benefits and then I just got really in my head and stuck in this place of like well I kind of want to change but I don’t even know if I can yeah that can happen for all these different variables.

Ryann

Oh my god and then it’s like no wonder like no wonder I’ve made my body the most important and interesting thing about me when this is the only thing that is talked about all freaking day long.

Katy

This is the praise that you get. And even after going through that, I still am unlearning saying the same things to other people because that’s just what you know. You just, even things like when people get a good suntan, being like, oh my God, you’re so tan. Like, why is that? Why is that a praise? And why am I happy? Like, why is that something we focus so heavily on someone’s looks?

Ryann

It’s definitely something that we have to unlearn. I know for me, I literally had to write down some compliment phrases and had to Google some compliment phrases to use as a replacement because I was like, I don’t know how to offer a compliment without it being appearance-based because this is all we hear.

Katy

And what we’re taught to be looking for from other people.

Ryann

Totally. I’m so curious to know, so I didn’t know that your Instagram started as a weight loss Instagram. Tell me more about that and that shift.

Katy

So I didn’t have Instagram for a long time. When I was in college, I was in a sorority and there was all this pressure of like, wear the right thing, take the right pictures, post the right captions. People would spend so much time editing their photos and like curating them. And it just really turned me off. And I was like a little rebel and I was like, well, I’m leaving my Instagram, I’m not gonna have one. And so I didn’t have one for a long time. And then I think once I graduated, I was like, okay, I’ll join again. And I started posting on my, just my regular page, just pictures of my, like on my stories, pictures of my food. Cause I got really into cooking. I made like stuffed peppers or like lasagna or something. And some people would be like, oh my gosh, what’s, can I get that recipe that looks really good?

And I got a lot of that over and over and over again. It’s like, maybe I should just make a little food page. That’d be kind of fun. And so kind of just on a whim, I started posting about my food and then I started trickling in my things about Weight Watchers and it became like my Weight Watchers weight loss success page. It was a lot of transformation pictures, it was a lot of this is when I was big and these are the things that I did to get there and this is what I do now and I’m so small and like this is my success story. And I mean, it kind of grew, I feel like, based off of that. I had a lot of people, and I had followed a lot of people going through weight loss and met some people through Weight Watchers, and that was like my whole focus. I would like break down every recipe into the point values. And a big thing I always said was like, you can substitute anything that you want.

You don’t have to eat the real thing, you can always have a substitute. So I was really into rice cakes. I’d eat rice cakes as bread. Sugar-free everything, fat-free everything. Everything was something free. And you could silly dessert the healthy way. That was the big thing. So that was a really also a big point of contention for me when I decided to move away from that lifestyle is what on earth do I do? I’ve spent so much time creating this brand of weight loss and how it’s positively changed my life. Now what do I do? How do I rewrap this? That was scary.

Ryann

And probably the fear of what are people gonna say when I shift gears?

Katy

Am I just like a big liar?

Ryann

So what happened when you shift gears?

Katy

I unfollowed a lot of people. I saw something that I don’t, it wasn’t even related to weight loss, but it was basically just like, if it doesn’t bring you joy, just get rid of it. And so I just kind of wiped all of the weight loss pages. And I started following a lot of like food freedom, body positivity accounts, and just trying to figure out what is, what am I trying to say? How am I trying to say it? And kind of towing the line of like, I don’t know. I feel like for me, I do think that it did benefit me to lose weight at that time. I don’t think that I was living a healthy lifestyle, but how do you balance that without driving yourself into an eating disorder?

Ryann

Yeah.

Katy

How do you balance that in a healthy way? And then I just kind of free-balled it. I was like, I’m just gonna see what happens. And I just tried to be really open and very vulnerable hid a lot of my weight loss because it was a very aesthetic change and, oh, look how awesome this was and how glamorous my weight loss was. And I kind of shifted gears to like, yeah, like that kind of sucked. I kind of drove away a lot of people and made a lot of unhealthy choices to look this way and to live this lifestyle. And there’s life on the other side. And so there was definitely a little bit of fluctuation, but I think a lot of people stuck around and I kind of just re-branded.

Ryann

Yeah.

Katy

I still cook a lot and I still love to cook, but I love it so much more now.

Ryann

Yeah.

Katy

Because I’ve always liked jokes that I cook, like my mother who just like, is like closing her eyes and putting the spices in, like you just, you’re just going all over the place. That’s how I like to cook. And so being so meticulous with the food scale and with the measuring cup and the grams and the points and the calories and the ingredients was horrible. And trying to make content off of that was even worse because it’s just, it’s just too much detail. It’s just too much calculation.

Ryann

Yeah.

Katy

And I just, I feel it’s just such a happy feeling.

Ryann

Oh my gosh, totally. Okay, so I have to know after doing that so rigidly for a year, how did you detach from the numbers?

Katy

From the food numbers?

Ryann

Yeah, like the points and the calories and like seeing every food as numbers and then And then also zero point things. And so like, how did you like start to get to a place where you didn’t see things in points or free or, you know?

Katy

Yeah. Yeah. It was rough. I was at, at the peak of it. Most things I already knew the point values without scanning it. 51 veggie straws or 22 grams of avocado or half of a banana or like I just kind of had that in my head. I stopped using the app but I still had it on my phone. It was like my little security blanket. I’m like it’s still here if I want it. But I stopped using it. And it was very anxiety provoking. But once I realized that I don’t know what my my I think my biggest fear was that I was just going to gain all this weight back, I was going to be completely out of control, I was going to just undo everything, even though what I was doing was making me miserable. So I was like, this doesn’t make any sense.

Yeah, this stinks anyway. So just stop doing it. I just had to force myself to detach. And I think changing the content that I was viewing and seeing that there were so many other people who were living in a way that was balanced and happy and healthy without all these tools was so relieving because you just feel like everybody’s trying to lose weight, everybody’s using these, this is the only way to be healthy. And so seeing that and actually living it and realizing that my world wasn’t exploding just because I wasn’t tracking my points, I was like, okay, I think I can do this. And it took a while. And there are still things that I am like, oh, I remember how much this is.

And I would still, I still like, try to adhere to like some serving sizes so I don’t just like eat an entire bag of chips in one sitting because I can certainly do that. But just knowing that you can listen to the serving size and if you want more you can have more and if you have more you’re not going to die and that’s it.

Ryann

Yeah.

Katy

And once I really simplified it everything became so much less complicated. Eating became less complicated, gatherings became less complicated, and I just overall felt this like relax. And then finally I deleted the app and I was like, okay, this is it, gotta do it. I think once I just started realizing the difference in my lifestyle and how I felt, it was worth it to keep fighting that urge to measure and to weigh and to stare at the ingredients. I was never really a macros person because honestly I hate math and I that it intimidated me Yeah, luckily I never got too focused on like this many calories or this many grams of fat because it was all kind of worked in In the program. Yeah, so in terms of that aspect, I didn’t feel super stuck to those numbers And so I think once I was able to let go of the points That was like the biggest hurdle for me that I was able to let go of everything else.

Ryann

Yeah, I love how you say how it kind of just like build it off of each other, but also meeting yourself where you’re at. Like that’s such a huge component that I bring into work with a lot of my clients where I’m like, let’s meet you where you’re at because let’s make this like a one and done. Like, let’s make this a one and done. I don’t want you to delete the app and then redownload it. Like leave it on your phone so that when you delete it, it’s gone forever.

Katy

It’s meaningful, yeah. Not just because you have to.

Ryann

Oh my gosh, 100%. So with that being said, obviously when you get to a point where you’re like, I’m done, this feels good, this is spring, like I feel at peace, but then your body starts to shift a little bit, there’s obviously this, oh, is this still what I want to do? How did you navigate kind of continuing on this journey as body changes happens?

Katy

Yeah, that was weird. I anticipated that. I was like, okay, at some point in your life, things are going to happen. God willing, I have kids, my body’s going to change, which I’ve learned a lot from my job. Like you go on vacation, your body fluctuates. Like, you have to be okay with your body changing because in order to stay this small and this thin, you have to be this, like, rigorous lifestyle that is, we’ve already decided we’re not doing that. So the only other option is, you’re probably gonna gain some weight. And I had to, like, really say it and understand it and be okay with it. And I think once I really understood that my smallest weight was not my happiest or my healthiest or maintainable, that was the thing. It’s like, I would weigh myself like three times a day, like when I got up, but only like before I drink any water, after I went to the bathroom, no clothes on, it was very specific.

And then like, after you go to the bathroom again, you’re like, should I do it again? Or the next day, you know, it was just, it was so much and I didn’t understand why my body kept fluctuating weights, probably because that wasn’t a healthy way. And so anything that I was eating or whatever was making it change so easily. I figured, hopefully, I’m like, how do other people, dad who just lives his normal life, he exercises here and there, he eats decently healthy here and there, how does he not just gain this weight day to day to day? Or does he? I don’t know. He looks the same every time I see him. And I came to the conclusion that there’s probably a weight that your body is comfortable at, that if you generally treat it well, it’s gonna stay there. And you’re not gonna have to work so hard and think so hard about what you’re doing. And that weight for me is actually that very first milestone that I met. And once I kind of fluctuated back up there, I have pretty much been the same.

And not that it matters, but it just is a point that it’s just like you can tell that this is where my body wants to be.

Ryann

Yeah.

Katy

Like it’s not even just like the number or the look or the size. It’s just, I don’t feel like I have to try so hard. I’m just here. It was difficult going up in sizes. I was very big on the numbers. So having never been in those smaller sizes, that was like a big win for me when I was losing weight. And I really clung to that. Gosh, this is a size small. This is a four. This is a six. Like that was huge. I’d post it, look at these pants. And so letting go of that and understanding that you’re not going to be in size four forever. That’s not you. That’s not your body. That’s not, that’s just not, that’s just not what’s going to happen. That was hard. I had to shed that, but it was a sacrifice that I was willing to make for my sanity and for my happiness. And I just had to let that go and just put it in the bucket of superficial parts of weight loss that are irrelevant.

Ryann

Yeah.

Katy

And then once I started seeing all of these things about sizes and how they change and how your body changes and how much it is that we wear the clothes, not the clothes wear us. Like it just, you just have to force yourself into this education and you just have to force yourself to change your mindset.

Ryann

I think that it’s so easy to just dismiss the fact that for some individuals, it takes a different amount of work to be a specific size due to genetics and biology and whatever. And when we are moving through life and we have this idea that like this way, like all of my problems are gonna be solved. And I know that when I’m there like I’m going to be happy and then we get there and then it’s not everything and we’re still not happy and then we shift back and then we have this thought process of am I going to go back there.

I think we forget to ask ourselves just the point that you discussed is that would living that way for the rest of my life make me happy like is that worth it and I think that that question right there can help put some things in perspective when things are changing where it’s like, as you mentioned, like that size four, like obviously I can get there, like I got there, but staying there and living that way is not the way that I want to live my life. And that’s the question that I think that we need to ask more, like, is that worth it to me? And if that makes me happy, then go do it. Go do it and be happy and like, don’t stress. But like, clearly there’s stress and anxiety and all this other stuff happening. So is it really the way that you want to live your life?

Katy

Right. The biggest thing I remember is just the irritability, just intense irritability from someone wanting me to just eat this with me. During COVID, when my sister and I would go home, we would, we, she also loves to cook. And so there was one night, I don’t remember what it was, that they, that she was cooking, and I was like, not having any of it. I’m like, absolutely not. Am I eating that? Zero percent. So I like made this very complex, it was like some two ingredient pizza dough. It’s like the Greek yogurt and something that like didn’t even taste, didn’t even look good. I was like, this is healthy, this is what I’m eating. It took so much extra effort and she just kept saying, not in a mean way, like what are you doing?

Ryann

Yeah

Katy

Let’s just cook together. Let’s just enjoy this together. We’re in the middle of a pandemic, let’s spend time together. And I was like, you don’t understand, I cannot eat that. I can’t track that. I don’t know what’s in that. I’m going to make my own food and like, stop talking to me. And I just remember just after the fact when it wasn’t even that good, it didn’t even look good on a picture, but I was like, I’ll take a picture of it. And just like a moment lost and how many other moments were there that I snapped at someone because are you putting butter in my pasta? How much oil? It just, it would drive me insane. Or a menu that I couldn’t look up before the restaurant would bring me to tears. And I’m just, that lifestyle, I just, that’s not something that I ever wanna do long-term. It’s not maintainable, and that’s not the person that I wanna be.

Ryann

Yeah.

Katy

That’s not, I don’t wanna raise kids with that mindset. I don’t, it just was not, it just was not something that I could do.

Ryann

I relate to that so much. I was such a nasty monster when I was in the depths of it. And I used to always blame not having friends and not having a boyfriend on the sides of my body. And then once I went through recovery, I was like, oh no, it’s because I just was not pleasant to be around at all. This is kind of a tangent or like off topic, but I would love to know because I have a lot of clients actually that are nurses as well. And I feel like the biggest struggle that they’ve come to terms with in recovery is navigating the different shifts while also trying to listen to your body. So I would love to know just from you, like how have you navigated that?

Katy

Yeah I worked night shift for a little over two years and it was a perfect storm because all I did was, that’s how I got into meal prepping and I still meal prep because it saves my life. I love to cook but doing everything on one day and spreading it out. I got into this habit at work where I would eat before I left and then I would have like at between 10 and 11 I would have a snack between 12 and 1 I would eat lunch and then at like 3 and 5 I would have more snacks. So I definitely think that I still ate enough I just planned it like very very meticulously. I’m also not one of those people that like gets nauseous at 4 a.m. because I just get hungry. But some people, some people,

Ryann

I don’t get that.

Katy

No. Some people have that problem though on night shift where they’re like, I literally cannot eat. Like I’m so tired, I feel sick. That just never happened to me. I guess you just have to be intentional about it. And I got myself into a rhythm of these are the times, these are my eating times. So like even when I would go out, it would be like 2 a.m. and I’d be like, time for a meal, not just a snack, a meal, because this is when I eat dinner. So I think you just, I feel like a lot of what I say is you have to force yourself, but you do. If you don’t force yourself, you just make excuses. And so I felt it was a lot easier when I just said, this is when I eat this, this is when I eat this. I didn’t really have a huge problem with it. It was a little neurotic because I was still tracking very heavily on night shift.

And I, one of the biggest problem, like hardest things is that at the hospital, there’s food everywhere, everywhere. Cookie cakes, snacks, donuts. That was my freaking nemesis. That would set me into a tailspin. And lots of people would be like, oh, you’re so good not eating that. I have to, or whatever. And they would like make you feel guilty for not eating it. And now that I do, it’s the opposite. Oh, I wish I could eat that, but I’m on a diet. They’re like, are you the same person that told me that two years ago?

Ryann

Yeah, yeah.

Katy

I don’t know. I think it’s weird working opposite shifts. I think you just have to find what works for you, whether that be like a protein shake in the middle of the night, like for a snack. It doesn’t have to be like a big crazy meal or like little snacks along the way. Some people can’t eat like spaghetti at 2 a.m. but I always could.

Ryann

No, I definitely think it’s like doing what works for you but I do think at the same time you you have to like have structure like especially in the beginning because it’s so easy for that sneaky voice to come in and be like oh no I’m fine and then it’s like wait a minute like even if it’s not intentional. That disordered voice is so sneaky. We can totally make all of the excuses in the book, why not to do it and why it’s fine, but the thing is, is that for us to change, we have to do something different, even when we don’t want to, and that’s really freaking hard.

Katy

You just have to make yourself have a structure.

Ryann

Yeah. Oh my gosh. Oh my gosh.

Katy

It just becomes habit. It just becomes habit.

Ryann

So Katy, for anybody right now who is, you know, kind of at the end of that weight loss journey, they have just gone through all of that and they are like, this is miserable and I am so afraid of what other people are going to say and what they’re going to think if I let the reins go a little bit and I prioritize my health, what words would you have for them?

Katy

I would say, think about the reasons why you got into this in the first place and think about the effects that it’s having on you now. For me, I wanted, my biggest thing was I wanna be healthy. And so I think I saw something that you posted the other day. It was like, think of the why and the why and the why and the why. And so more specifically, I wanted to be healthy, but what does that mean? And so after losing all that weight, sure I could walk up 10 flights of stairs without breaking a sweat, but I developed Raynaud’s. I was so cold. I didn’t have a period anymore. I was not eating or I was eating like a bird. Like, okay, what kind of healthy is that? Am I still following that initial goal of what brought me here? And like we talked about, is this sustainable?

And if it’s not, you just have to, you have to figure out a plan B. I think for me, it was like, is, are the benefits of staying here outweighing the benefits of doing something different and the answer was no. And not all is lost. I mean, I learned, I, through everything that I went through, I wouldn’t take it back, even though it was crazy. I wouldn’t take it back because I think it brought me a lot of knowledge that I can impart to other people and it helped me get to this entirely different place in my life of confidence and knowledge. And so I think also just understanding that you’re not a failure for rerouting. You didn’t do something wrong and it’s okay to be brave and to change your mind. I’m a very black and white person, which is why I think when I start things like this, an exercise regimen or a diet regimen, it gets obsessive because you just like, okay, this is what works, this is who I am now.

Ryann

Yeah.

Katy

And it’s okay to let a little gray in there, do something different, let, let go a little bit and yeah, I think just being okay with rerouting.

Ryann

I love the word rerouting. I was going to highlight that because with the black and white, I think it’s so easy for us to immediately go into I’m going backwards, but if you say I’m rerouting instead, what a whole different energy right there. Like what a whole different vibe.

Katy

Yeah.

Ryann

I was listening to a podcast the other day and I was like, Oh my God, why have I never thought about this before? And he was talking about when we’re resistant to change, it’s usually because we see it as letting something go rather than opting for something new. And so like when we’re resisting change and recovery, like obviously there’s this fear of like, I’m letting all of this go. But like, if we think about it as rerouting, just like you said, it’s opting for something new. I’m rerouting, I am getting new experiences, new way of living, new health, new happiness. And that’s so powerful.

Katy

I’m also trying to think like, what would you say to someone else? It’s so easy to sit here and be like, I’m this, I’m that, I screwed up. But if you had a friend that was saying I am absolutely miserable you would never tell them to keep going yeah say I support you do what makes you happy yeah and we just have to learn to give the grace to ourselves that we would give someone else.

Ryann

Oh my god totally Katy in honor of the food freedom lab what is food freedom mean to you?

Katy

Oh, that just gave me chills. Just food freedom is just a big relief, a big breath. It just is a smile to me. Food freedom is just going out and eating a salad one day if I want, or eating pizza if I want, and literally not even thinking about it, not saying, Oh, well, I can go on a walk later, going home and laying down. It is literally just letting go of all of the societal expectations about what you are supposed to eat, how you’re supposed to eat. It’s just, it’s peace.

Ryann

I love it. Katy, if anyone wants to connect with you, learn from you more, chat with you, where can they find you?

Katy

I am on Instagram at kallen_cooks. I’m on Facebook as kallen_cooks, but I post a lot of reels and the reels don’t transfer over. So it’s just the pictures. So Instagram is my best way to find me.

Ryann

Yay. Thank you so much for all of that. I so appreciate your time. And I know that so many listeners here will resonate with all of what you just shared.

Katy

I’m so glad. It’s so awesome to be able to talk to you. I was so excited.

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Disclaimer: If you have or suspect that you have an eating disorder, please contact a qualified health care professional immediately. If you are in the United States and experiencing a medical or health emergency, please call 911 or call for appropriate emergency medical help.