Finding Freedom From Disordered Eating with Helen Bennett
The road to recovery from an eating disorder is not a linear or easy path.
In episode 280, Coach Helen Bennett is here with us to share her story of disordered eating, including binging and purging, and how she started to find freedom and heal her relationship with food.
I invited Helen to the podcast because I appreciate her compassionate approach to using practical tools to get started in recovery and empowerment toward food freedom.
Helen Bennett is a certified Health Coach and Addiction Recovery Coach and the founder of BulimiaFreedom.com.
Disclaimer: This episode offers insights into binge eating and bulimia, along with practical tips to initiate the journey towards recovery. It is important to note that this podcast does not substitute professional medical advice. Rather, it serves as a source of inspiration, drawing from Coach Helen Bennett's extensive personal and professional expertise in overcoming disordered eating patterns.
Recovery isn't just about quitting harmful actions. It's about reclaiming the time and life you've lost to obsession and compulsion. -Helen Bennett
In this episode, you’ll hear:
Helen's journey with disordered eating patterns and her road to recovery
Understanding the core of disordered eating
The role of acceptance in recovery
How to use practical tools during urges to binge
Practical steps and tips toward breaking habitual patterns and healing your relationship with food
The value of “slip up’s” and listening to your body
Resources mentioned:
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[00:00:00] Lori: Hi,
[00:00:00] Helen: Hey, Lori. Lovely to meet you finally.
[00:00:03] Lori: It's so nice to meet you finally. We've had a fun little chat before we started recording, and I'm really excited for this conversation, talking about changing our relationship with food. And we are talking to women who have had decades of experience with this relationship. And so I know that you're gonna offer us some really valuable information today.
[00:00:25] Helen: hope so.
[00:00:25] Lori: wanna start off with, yeah. Oh, of course you are. Of course you're
[00:00:29] Helen: Change the
[00:00:30] Helen: Minds.
[00:00:31] Lori: let's blow their minds. Let's, let's blow our minds,
[00:00:34] Lori: right? I wanna start off with the work that you do.
[00:00:37] Lori: Talk about that. What is it?
[00:00:39] Helen: I help people stop losing control with food, so people who feel they've got a compulsive relationship where it's not just a, there could be people who just occasionally feel a bit out of control, but usually people reach out to me when they're feeling I. Man, I keep having an intention to stop and I just blow beyond that intention.
[00:00:59] Helen: So [00:01:00] that might be somebody who's overeating regularly or somebody who's actually feeling like, wow, I'm starting to binge. I feel like I'm binging. It's very secretive. I'm hiding and right through to people who struggle with er. So I actually, my history was, I struggled with bulimia for two decades and trust me, through the whole period I was desperate to stop.
[00:01:19] Helen: There was no point at which I wasn't trying to stop. But food's a tricky, tricky character. And I, it's a long story how I got to learn the strategies, the tips, the tools that I teach people now. But ultimately I got to a point where I really started to experience freedom. So, but my definition that is I'm able to eat when I'm hungry, stop when I'm full, have absolute control around that.
[00:01:46] Helen: And I. And I can indulge it Inca occasionally without guilt, without feeling like I've gotta be worried that I'm going to just gain weight if I listen to my body. So I've got to that place now where I feel a lot of trust with my body [00:02:00] and real freedom in my relationship with food, and I feel really lucky.
[00:02:04] Helen: So while I wouldn't wanna go through 20 years of bulimia again, I do feel like it forced. This deep change and this real working of the relationship to the point at which I could experience this on a, regular basis. I'm not a perfect eater. I have days when I'm a little anxious and I eat more. I have days when I'm feeling a little lonely and I eat some, but I, I really make those choices very consciously.
[00:02:28] Helen: And so it's an interesting journey. But what I do now is I help people who wanna feel that for themselves, who's sick of all the worry and the obsession and the compulsion come to that place too. So if somebody's feeling like they're losing, losing control, that's kind of the definition that we use. I actually started working purely with people who struggled with bulimia.
[00:02:47] Helen: I went straight into the deep end and then I discovered that actually those techniques work like magic for people who just feel a bit out of control. So I've gone at the reverse direction.
[00:02:58] Lori: Congratulations.
[00:02:59] Lori: [00:03:00] Congratulations on the work that you're doing. 'cause it, it is so important and congratulations on your
[00:03:05] Lori: recovery
[00:03:06] Helen: you.
[00:03:07] Lori: and I
[00:03:08] Helen: Gonna breathe that in.
[00:03:10] Lori: Breathe
[00:03:11] Helen: it was a, it was a long, bumpy road.
[00:03:14] Lori: Yeah.
[00:03:15] Lori: And so much of what I do as well as comes from so many years of experience with drinking
[00:03:20] Lori: decades worth and being able to work through those things.
[00:03:24] Lori: And I know that you're coming from that place in your heart where you're saying, I don't want anybody out there to struggle with this and feel like they are alone.
[00:03:33] Helen: Oh yeah. I think that's, it's really only been very recently, Laurie, that I've even been able to say publicly that I struggled with Lumia. I. Now I'm doing it and it's out there and it's on Instagram and it's all, but you know, for a long time I would do it quietly with my clients in the groups I was, but never really in front of friends and family because I carried so much shame and I struggled silently for so long and many [00:04:00] people have reached out to me and said, Helen, I had no idea.
[00:04:04] Helen: And I think probably there's gonna be people listening who may be not struggling with bulimia, but who have this silent, shameful guilt-ridden day-to-day battle with food. But maybe outwardly they look strong and confident and disciplined and they can do everything else, but oh, when it comes to food, they just dunno what what to do.
[00:04:24] Helen: And I felt that exact same way. I thought, how can I do all these other incredible things, but I can't just stop when I'm full? What on earth is that all about? So of course we can dive into that, but I know there are people listening who are gonna be going, oh my gosh, she's just described me. Even if they're not actually purging.
[00:04:42] Lori: Absolutely.
[00:04:43] Lori: Well, congratulations, and I'm so honored to have you be able to share that with our listeners today because I know that shame and not for so much, for the food, of course, for my drinking. And there's somebody out there who's listening to this. It might not be a food thing, but we all are struggling
[00:04:59] Helen: [00:05:00] Yeah. Yeah.
[00:05:00] Lori: we're all carrying that shame around.
[00:05:02] Lori: And so when you share it with somebody else, it's a gift to yourself and it's a gift to the other person. And I feel, and I'm receiving that gift today, Helen, so thank you.
[00:05:12] Lori: It's a big deal.
[00:05:13] Helen: It is. Yeah. I think I'll just own that for a second. Yeah, it's it's been something else coming out, quote unquote, but, it's been well worth it. And I must say I feel very comfortable now talking about it, so that's great. But whew, there was a while there where I just thought, even going back to South Africa where I was, I live in Spain and sometimes when I go home, I still bump into people who have no idea what I'm doing, obviously.
[00:05:37] Helen: And they'll say, oh, what do you do? And then it always ends up coming out. And it's, I still feel that that desire to just not tell anybody and hide. But, to be truthful now, years later, and I'm sure you feel the same way about your relationship with alcohol, whatever the case may be, you, I've realized there's just no shame.
[00:05:58] Helen: If I could have stopped, I [00:06:00] would've, this wasn't a, this wasn't a capability problem, this was just, I, I didn't have the tools, I didn't really have people to help and guide me that I needed, and I was trying things and they were all the wrong things, but it wasn't for lack of desire. Or drive that I wasn't able to stop.
[00:06:18] Helen: And of, of course, what I also didn't realize, and maybe this is a really important message, is once I started throwing up my food, I mean the binging was one thing, but once I actually started throwing up, and it's even, I still find it hard to talk about this, what I had no concept of was that I wouldn't be able to stop.
[00:06:34] Helen: Of course, in the moment I thought, just this once, I'll never do it again. This is disgusting. Just this once, and then it became, and then it was every meal and then, and the next thing I was trying to stop and I couldn't. So if somebody had maybe warned me when I was 13 or 12, Hey, don't, please don't start that.
[00:06:50] Helen: 'cause it's just, it could be as difficult to stop as a, an addictive drug. I might've thought twice about starting. I was a very good girl. I Didn't smoke. [00:07:00] I drank a bit when I was younger, but I was very careful. Didn't do drugs because I'd heard these are highly addictive substances and I was a good girl and I wanted everybody to love me, so I wasn't gonna touch that.
[00:07:10] Helen: So I had no sense of just how hard it would be to get up. And I think a lot of people don't, couldn't possibly understand that if they haven't dealt with the disorder. 'cause they must think, but surely you just stop. But I, I suppose it's the same as saying to somebody, well just stop drinking.
[00:07:27] Helen: Just stop. I'm sure they've thought about it.
[00:07:30] Lori: of. That's what I was
[00:07:32] Lori: thinking of as well. It could be in different categories of our life because it's not the capability problem. Like you said, the desire is there,
[00:07:39] Lori: the need is there, the shoulds are
[00:07:41] Lori: there. I should stop doing this. Right. And like you said earlier, you're going about your life.
[00:07:46] Lori: You got all this other stuff going on and it's just, why is it this? Why is it the, the
[00:07:51] Lori: food? And we can Yeah. Totally relate that to drinking alcohol. Can you share a little bit of when this all started? [00:08:00] 'cause you
[00:08:00] Lori: mentioned as 12, 13. Is this when it started for
[00:08:03] Helen: I actually started. Throwing up my food when I was 16. But the now in reflection, I can see that so much of the problem, if that was just the symptom. The problem was started long before then. And the problem was insecurity, not feeling attractive, not feeling loved, just desperately wanting to be loved.
[00:08:21] Helen: Having a boyfriend, feeling like I belonged. And so much of that came, started many, many, many years before. And my relationship with food was shifting. I think I was about 14 when I went on my first diet. And I think I was moving swiftly in the direction of anorexia at that point. Hyper controlling my food, lost a lot of weight.
[00:08:42] Helen: And then it, I think all that happened. I just don't have clear memories on this, but one day I overheard somebody talking about being sick and, I probably just ate a bit more than I thought I should, quote unquote, that night and thought, well, that's awful, but let me give it a try and, not expecting to do it [00:09:00] again.
[00:09:00] Helen: So I think it was as simple as that. But what I discovered and now know is what started off as just a simple thing, just wanting weight loss, not wanting to get fat, all of that, and who doesn't these days it feels like everybody's doing some kind of disordered eating or dieting. What started off so simply as just a kind of quick fix became this unbelievably powerful way, not only eating, but also getting rid of it.
[00:09:29] Helen: It was both ways to deal with all the emotional turmoil of being a teenager and into my twenties. And weirdly, I actually was watching a documentary with princess Diana, and she mentions her struggle with bulimia, and she spoke in that moment about. It was her way of dealing with anger. And I thought, I got you girl.
[00:09:47] Helen: I totally understand what you've just said. And I could imagine, again, like somebody maybe not really understanding that, but if you've lived that, and so what started off as just, oh, I'll see if I can keep the weight off, became, oh, I'm going to, [00:10:00] this is helps me deal with anger and frustration and sadness and loneliness, rejection and disappointment.
[00:10:05] Helen: And then it was, you could feel the, just the absolute vicious cycle that it became when it's the only coping, me coping mechanism. I had to deal with all of those feelings as well.
[00:10:17] Lori: Yeah, I can relate.
[00:10:18] Lori: And I know there are so many listeners out there who can relate to this, and starting at that age, what year was it for you when you were 12? Do you
[00:10:27] Helen: Oh right. So, I dunno, 12, six, I was, I think six, I was 16 in 94 I think, or 95. I'm not quite sure.
[00:10:37] Lori: Okay. you remember? Yeah. Do you, because what I'm thinking of, we all get this idea and it's like, when did it start for me? I'm envisioning Brooke Shields. Like that was the vision of who I wanted to be, that Brooke
[00:10:51] Lori: Shields was there. When I was younger, Jane Fonda, all of the, the. Visions that I have out there [00:11:00] in, in the media. Right. And we're, we're taught this diet industry. 'cause when you said you went on your first diet at 14, I think I went on my first diet at 12, and that's when it started for me was the, the, the food and everything became a comfort. 'cause I lost my dad
[00:11:15] Lori: when I was 11
[00:11:16] Lori: and I turned to food.
[00:11:18] Lori: And then a few years later, oh, thank you. A few years later I went to alcohol. And so during that time, goodness. Let me just think about this. It was 1978. It was the, the end of the seventies going into the early
[00:11:31] Lori: eighties. And that's when I became hyper-focused on, I've gotta look like somebody
[00:11:36] Lori: else. I've, I've, this will be my part of what makes me worthy.
[00:11:42] Helen: Yeah. And of course at that time, so I was, I must be, so I'm 40. Five now, I reckon. And I was born in 78, so I must, for me it was the eighties as well. But of course at that time, all the movies we were watching, 'cause in South Africa we, we really got all the American movies and I loved all the [00:12:00] romances and I loved all the, the swan the, the ugly duckling to the swan.
[00:12:04] Helen: There was the theme. It still is in many ways. I mean, there's a series on Prime, I think, or at the moment called the Summer. I turned pretty, it's like that was, that was the thing then. And of course I just got it in my head like so many of, if I could just be thinner and more beautiful, then I would be popular and I could be loved.
[00:12:22] Helen: 'cause that's what the movies were showing us. And so, I mean, who could blame us really? And then of course, I'm not sure, I dunno about your mom, but my mom also, she was doing the Jane Fonda with the Leg woman and she was grabbing her non-existent belly fat and worried about how fat she was. So it was, it was, it was the time.
[00:12:38] Helen: And the question is, is it better or worse now? I think it's probably a bit of both. There's so many wonderful role models out there now that promote the opposite, but it's, I wouldn't wanna grow up right now with Instagram and everything and the pressure that's on women to be perfect.
[00:12:56] Helen: And, I think I got off lightly maybe. But anyway, [00:13:00] our work's cut out for us, I think.
[00:13:01] Lori: Absolutely. That's why I wanted to talk about what year it was
[00:13:05] Lori: because looking back then, we were already dealing with it. There was so much in the media. Yes. My mother, sweet Carol Jean, she always did the floor exercises. She always did like the three day diet. That was a big thing
[00:13:19] Lori: here. Back when I was a kid it was horrible.
[00:13:22] Lori: Three day diet, all of that. And when I put on weight, she never mentioned anything to me about my
[00:13:28] Lori: weight or anything like that, because it has always been a struggle with me going back and forth. And she never mentioned anything like that to me. It just, I had it in my head that other girls around me. Skinny that that's what I needed to
[00:13:42] Lori: be as well. And so now I think about it all of the time. These gals who are on Instagram, these girls who are on Instagram
[00:13:51] Lori: are struggling with this, and now they get to open their phone at any time and see all of the different images, all of the different messages out
[00:13:59] Helen: mm
[00:13:59] Lori: But [00:14:00] at the same time, and I want to have you share this, if you have experience with this, we are seeing more of the, the body love and the body appreciation for your body.
[00:14:11] Helen: Yeah.
[00:14:11] Lori: what, what are you seeing out there?
[00:14:15] Helen: Well, when, now that I'm looking for more of that content, the body love, self-acceptance, I'm seeing it. Of course, I was already in that process. Not of course. How would, how would anybody know? I given my journey. One of the, the sort of core skills, and I think it's a lifelong skill, especially in the environment that we live in with so much pressure to be perfect, has been learning to really accept my body as it is and not so acceptance on a bad day.
[00:14:45] Helen: Love it on a good day. That's my thing. And of course now I'm 45 and everything's changing. And so I have, that's why it's a journey because just when you get to accept it, something new changes or, and it's like, oh wow, we've gotta get back in the head and go back [00:15:00] into that place of acceptance. But in terms of finding it out there, now that I'm looking for it, I'm seeing it, but I do wonder, I.
[00:15:07] Helen: How much of that penetrates Just the average person who's scrolling. 'cause I think Instagram's very aware that I'm interested in that content, so it's sending me more of that, but it still feels like a bit of a drop in the ocean compared to the opposite, which is lose weight in 10, 10 days. Like the eight week shred.
[00:15:23] Helen: I think there's a lot more of that out there, but I love that the voice is bolder now of body acceptance. And I, and I'm very much 20, 24 for me is a year where I can feel the core theme is gonna be visibility. If I'm saying that I love and accept my body, can I be seen exactly as I am? And even that's challenging.
[00:15:44] Helen: It's one thing for me to love and accept my body quietly at home with my loved ones around. It's another thing to put myself out there and be willing to be judged. But that's the core of this, isn't it? If we are not willing to have somebody judge us and let it [00:16:00] go, then we are always gonna be trying to change.
[00:16:04] Helen: Or hiding, so this is, I mean this is like the, the 12th skill on my list of things that sort of are required. And this is the really tricky one. But I think that the key is to reclaim what we were born with. When we were born, we weren't thinking, oh my gosh, I'm so ugly. Look at my fat rolls. We were intuitive with food.
[00:16:23] Helen: We embraced our bodies, so we delighted in play. And somewhere along the line we started to lose that. And for some people it happened very early and for some people they got a bit longer. But the wiring for that, the brain wiring is there, thank goodness. And then we make a commitment and we start to practice feeling the feeling because it won't come easy for a lot of people who feel legitimately not thin enough, pretty enough, whatever, enough.
[00:16:53] Helen: And, but with practice, you do start to feel that it is true, that your incredible body, which is incredible, [00:17:00] really is enough for you. Maybe not rockstar amazing today, but enough, enough and deserving of care, and it took me a long time to get there.
[00:17:10] Lori: Hmm. I'm proud of you
[00:17:12] Lori: and the visibility piece. Seeing it. And I just wanna go back to what you said. It's like if we're looking for diets, we're scrolling diets and losing weight and why can't I lose weight? This is one of those things that come up, you
[00:17:23] Lori: know, a lot, For me and, and women that I work with, is the, the
[00:17:27] Lori: weight, in the shift as we go through menopause, we are in post menopause, our bodies are changing. Our activity levels can be changing, our hunger levels are changing, and I experienced all of that. And then, so we have all of these. Older expectations of ourselves, to, to be on point with our food, to be thin, to, work out all of the
[00:17:50] Lori: time. And then it's like, okay, well now we're aging.
[00:17:53] Lori: And so now you gotta stack that on top of
[00:17:55] Lori: it as well. And so the visibility piece, we need more people on social media. [00:18:00] We need more people like you who are sharing their story and talking about this. And I loved what you said about on the bad days, it's acceptance. And on the good days it's love and I can totally get behind that.
[00:18:13] Lori: But whatever we're searching for, search for the things that you need. And if you need more acceptance of your body and where you are now at the stage of life, search for
[00:18:21] Lori: that. 'cause it's out there. Maybe not that many people are talking about it, but Helen's talking
[00:18:25] Helen: yeah. I think they're probably a lot more than we realize, and it's glorious to find them, and then you start to think everybody's talking about it, and I've come late to the party, but I think it's just what Instagram's watching, Instagram, Facebook, whatever social media we're using
[00:18:41] Lori: You talked about, the symptom of disordered eating, but then what's at the core of it? What is actually driving disordered eating patterns?
[00:18:52] Helen: think with what we've just said, has really summarized what I see predominantly, and this is men and women have reached out to me [00:19:00] whether they've struggled the extreme or not. It tends to always manifest somewhere when we are younger where there's a sense of not enoughness, and the solution tends to be, well, if I could just get thinner, just like we've been saying, but ironically, when we start to even just think.
[00:19:15] Helen: Restrictively. Our body is so well designed to respond by making sure that we eat, and I think that's just pure survival mechanism. And there's a lot of studies to show that the more we actually diet or just think restrictively, I shouldn't eat that. I'm not allowed to have that. It actually has this horrible and really cruel backlash effect of getting us hyper-focused on food.
[00:19:39] Helen: And more often than not, when you track something back to when the real disorder or the binging starts, the out of control starts. Not long before that there was an a extreme diet in most cases, not for everybody, but in most of the people I work with and I, and so it's the [00:20:00] hardest part of recovery, if we're gonna call it recovery, is healing.
[00:20:04] Helen: Our relationship with food is, I. Actually being willing to not just say, well, I wanna stop the binging or the purging. If you are struggling with bulimia, but actually, wow, I need to let go of this restrictive mindset I've got. I've gotta, it's not just one behavior or two. It's restricting, binging, and then compensating with purging or over exercising, whatever the case may be.
[00:20:31] Helen: And everybody wants to stop the horrible behaviors. Nobody wants to be losing control. Nobody wants to be over exercising or using lax symptoms or all the things throwing up their food. But not many people are in a rush to lick over restricting, because then how would I lose weight? 'cause that's what everybody wants because we are being told that weight loss is sort of, well, we're not just being told, we've been shown for decades.
[00:20:55] Helen: Weight loss is the, it's the thing everybody's after and it's just [00:21:00] relentlessly being thrown out there in the media now. I think that's. Fair enough, in some cases where weight gain is actually the cause of disease. Of course it's not always or and so some people really do need to actually lose weight for their health.
[00:21:15] Helen: But most of the people who reach out to me are in good, healthy, happy bodies, but they feel not thin enough endlessly. So now what? How do I lose the weight if I've gotta stop restricting? Oh, you've gotta let your body start speaking to you first and then we'll see. So I never promised weight loss, although for many people it does happen, especially if they've been binge eating.
[00:21:44] Helen: But first, first, first, let's see where your body is at. Its health. Healthiest, happiest, comfortable being fed enough, not being endlessly restricted. Let's find out where that is, and then we'll see whether at that point there's a weight [00:22:00] loss requirement. And I mean, you can guess. Most of the time there isn't.
[00:22:04] Helen: Because when you start listening to your body, it's really good. When we actually listen at guiding us back to a place that is healthy and happy, our body's not saying, oh yes please, I wanna binge all night on pizza and drink 10 bottles of wine. All the, the awful we feel after a binge eating episode is evidence that your body's saying, please, let's not do that again.
[00:22:27] Helen: That was awful. But catching it in the moment where that decision is made now, that's where that little magic happens.
[00:22:36] Lori: So I really wanna talk about that moment where we decide our food
[00:22:41] Lori: choice, right? Or we decide if we're gonna go into a binge. If in that moment, what can we do?
[00:22:51] Helen: First of all's catching it. That can be hard. A lot of people feel out of control 'cause they feel like they don't have any power of choice. But [00:23:00] when we slow things down, so the first thing I teach is what I call skill zero. It's just for the next few days or the next week or forever, actually just watch with curiosity and playfulness to see what's going on in that moment that we hit the the fuck it button.
[00:23:16] Helen: Basically in that tipping point. And even if you can't em, even if in the moment you don't see it, you will generally be able to go back in time and go, oh yeah, last night when I, and then you think it back and you go, actually that's what going on in my head. But so when we start doing that, the first step is, can I see, can I spot that moment where I'm tripping over that line?
[00:23:36] Helen: Because if I can, now we've got an opportunity to change something. And most, I mean actually everybody can, I dunno, anybody who hasn't been able to find notice when they're starting to make that decision, I. And what I say, and I actually learned this from a great coach that I worked with when I was studying addiction recovery actually.
[00:23:56] Helen: He said he worked with people, he was struggling with drinking and he had this crazy way [00:24:00] of doing it where he'd say, well, if you're gonna drink, drink consciously or something, which still sounds like an oxymoron, but I think what he was saying. Which I now use is if you're gonna binge, let's take all the judgment out of it.
[00:24:11] Helen: We are not saying don't do it, we're just saying, first of all, I just want you to watch and learn with playful curiosity and no judgment. What is happening for you in that moment. And once you've got some understanding of what's going on, then we can start interjecting and trying to see if we can just break that slow the moment down at the very least, or hold it off for five minutes.
[00:24:31] Helen: So what I use is a very simple technique where we just say, 'cause a lot of people you'll hear, oh, go for a walk. And these are lovely things, but if anybody struggled with binge eating, they'll know in the moment. Nobody's going to go meditate for 10 minutes. 'cause it's really
[00:24:46] Lori: Yeah.
[00:24:47] Helen: right? All you wanna just, and just keep eating.
[00:24:51] Helen: So we have to say, you know what, when you catch it. Just give yourself a freedom, 15. And if you can't do 15 minutes, do five. And if [00:25:00] you can't do five, do one. 'cause if we can break that habitual just straight into it, slowly over time, it will build. And what usually happens is, and I mean I don't mind what they do in that 15 minutes, but their job is just to not continue eating.
[00:25:16] Helen: And even that can be excruciating for some people. But usually what happens in that 15 minutes, the energy of the binge, that kind of dopamine, Dr. Upsurge has now had time to calm down and they've probably just gone, well, if I've gotta wait 15 minutes, then I'm just gonna distract myself. So that works. So, and usually at the end of 15 minutes they're able to go, you know what, I can go another 15, or, oh, actually, the urge has gone completely.
[00:25:43] Helen: Not always, but we just don't have judgment around it. Let's just see if you can get a minute in there to break the habit. 'cause all the time the brain is watching, it's rewiring. And then over time those urges just simply don't come 'cause then they're getting to an hour or longer. So we try and keep it as simple as that.
[00:25:59] Helen: But I [00:26:00] have another technique as well. It's when you decide freedom 15, just put your energy back onto life. 'cause we tend to think, what should I do? The whole point of recovery is to be able to live your life and reclaim the time that you've lost in the obsession and the compulsion. So we training early days for that one minute that you waited.
[00:26:21] Helen: Just see if you can refocus on whatever it is you were doing. Were you in a conversation? Were you washing the dishes? Were you watching tv? Just get all your focus into that. And so it's just training us to get our focus back to what the very thing we're trying to reclaim, which is really exciting. And usually life distracts us enough to forget that we had the urge in the first place.
[00:26:43] Helen: So those are the kind of simple techniques where we just have practical things where we give people things to do when they catch themselves, they just go, I can feel I'm there 15 minutes. I've just gotta wait 15. And the key to that is actually to give yourself permission at the end of 15 minutes. If it is excruciating, keep going.[00:27:00]
[00:27:00] Helen: But be kind, be compassionate. Don't judge yourself. Watch and learn. Just see and write it down. And it's hard for people to not be beating themselves up when they're in the moment of a binge, but they get good at it because what's the point of beating yourself up? If you can learn something from it, you win.
[00:27:22] Lori: I love it.
[00:27:23] Lori: You're speaking my
[00:27:24] Helen: Yeah. Girl, that's awesome.
[00:27:25] Lori: And yeah, documenting it as well, because that's such an important exercise. Those are great solutions. They're actual solutions and
[00:27:34] Lori: mindfulness, whatever we are about to check out
[00:27:38] Lori: is such a practice. It's such a practice. And sometimes it'll feel like, oh boy, this is way too hard.
[00:27:44] Lori: But I like how you chunk it down. If you can't do 15, do 10.
[00:27:47] Lori: If you can't do 10, do five. If you can't do five, do a minute
[00:27:49] Lori: and repeat.
[00:27:51] Lori: It's like rent and repeat. Keep doing it, but then write it down because then you're actually learning more about
[00:27:57] Lori: it and that's what's gonna help us the most. That's what I'm [00:28:00] hearing you say.
[00:28:00] Lori: So
[00:28:01] Helen: You've nailed it.
[00:28:03] Lori: fantastic. So starting that healing process is really about being mindful
[00:28:08] Lori: and taking time, because I feel like we can listen to our bodies and learn so much more about ourselves and what really is
[00:28:15] Helen: mm
[00:28:16] Lori: by giving ourselves that permission slip.
[00:28:19] Helen: I love what you've just said. 'cause that, and you, now you've just spoken my language because the permission, it's actually like the permission slip to slip the slip up. I get excited as a coach when somebody slips up. I never, I'm never happy that it happened. But if it's already happened and we can't change that, it's happened.
[00:28:41] Helen: We've got this unbelievable opportunity to discover what was driving that? What was the emotion? What were you feeling? What were you thinking? And there usually lies the work there usually, right? Lies, the deep rooted stuff that was underneath all of the disorder all along. And that's [00:29:00] what I mean. I get so excited.
[00:29:01] Helen: So I think of slip ups as gold. It's where all the best if we open and we are willing to not beat ourselves up and just go, well, I'm really disappointed. Disappointment is understandable. Of course you're gonna feel that, but the discipline is not just moving on and forgetting it happened. It's staying with it for long enough in the disappointment to go, what was going on?
[00:29:24] Helen: What was I feeling? What was I thinking? What was the event? Let's have a look. And always there's good information in there and usually we start to track it back and, and we see patterns and that's when it gets exciting. 'cause then we just started to see, oh, it's this emotion that's always underlying or this thing.
[00:29:42] Helen: I had a client the other day who noticed, who started to notice that the only time she binges now is when somebody last minute gives her an assignment. She's exhausted. She's a mum, she's working so hard, long hours late end of year. She's absolutely shuttered. And just as she thinks she's gonna [00:30:00] get a bit of a weekend off, somebody gives her assignment due for Monday.
[00:30:04] Helen: And that's, and now that we've spotted the pattern, now we've got work. Right. So it's exciting.
[00:30:11] Lori: That's, that's how it works. We either can be disappointed in ourselves and. Do nothing about it or we can be disappointed in ourselves and that's okay. Honestly. Like where did we learn that you should not be disappointed in yourself ever. That's just not realistic, but take that, that feeling and turn it around for yourself by learning,
[00:30:30] Lori: because there's so much gold in what you just said. And that's actually the the first step to taking that healing pathway.
[00:30:38] Helen: Yeah, exactly. If we're open to it, it's all there. It's all in the lips.
[00:30:45] Lori: So much of it is the, yeah, the, the permission slip to slip. I, I feel the same way in coaching too, because it's like we cannot expect ourselves to be writing everything in stone and
[00:30:58] Lori: everything to be perfect. We're human. [00:31:00] We make mistakes. We go into it messy and say, I'm going to slip. I'm going to have challenging days.
[00:31:05] Lori: I'm going to have all of these things.
[00:31:07] Lori: I.
[00:31:07] Lori: feel like we can ease the pressure, but so much of us want that. Well, so much of us are the all or nothing.
[00:31:13] Helen: Mm,
[00:31:13] Lori: We've gotta have the all or nothing. It's gotta be really perfect. And when we start something, just that pressure alone I feel can be really triggering towards something like binging on food,
[00:31:24] Lori: binging with alcohol, whatever it is.
[00:31:27] Lori: Like, oh my goodness, I'm gonna stress myself out so much about
[00:31:30] Lori: this that I'm gonna go ahead and drink. I'm gonna go ahead and eat.
[00:31:34] Helen: Yeah. And if we are not perfect, then we failed. And the problem with food is because we are in, we can't go cold Turkey. We are in relation with it, and we are working with it. We are holding it, cooking it, smelling, and experiencing it all the time. That habitual binge eating behavior's not gonna be going away in a hurry.
[00:31:56] Helen: It doesn't happen overnight. So the, the [00:32:00] compassion we have to have and the willingness to fail is. Because failure, unfortunately, I don't wanna say inevitable, 'cause it does feel, I, I'm hopeful there will come a day where I have a client who I meet who just never has a bad moment. From the moment we start working together, they start listening to their body and it's gangbusters all the way to the, to freedom.
[00:32:20] Helen: But in most cases, because it's one thing to be able to get through your freedom. 15, when you're energized, you're feeling good and you've had a good day and things are going well. It's another thing to do it. At 9:00 PM when you've done a million to-dos, you've barely had a moment for yourself and all you wanna do is bitch, and then you, you couldn't be bothered then no, no amount of why you shouldn't be doing, it's gonna stop you in that moment.
[00:32:42] Helen: But over time you'll get there. If you're willing to learn and just do the work of coming back and going, Hmm. On reflection what happened there? What was going on? So, yeah, no, we are on it. The, the, the winnings and the, the slip and food, [00:33:00] because it's tricky and we can't go cold Turkey. The chances for slips are high, so let's just embrace them.
[00:33:06] Helen: Which is not to say, oh, well I'll just binge today. I couldn't be bothered. It's actually, I'm gonna try my best, and if it doesn't work out, I'll learn.
[00:33:15] Lori: Mm-Hmm.
[00:33:16] Helen: That's it.
[00:33:17] Lori: And what you said is, is key. You have to be open
[00:33:20] Lori: and you have to be willing to learn. Fail. Not look at it as a failure, but look at it as a
[00:33:24] Lori: lesson. 'cause especially as we
[00:33:25] Lori: get older, my goodness, how many times have we failed? And we're, we're
[00:33:29] Lori: still here. It's like, if we're not learning from it, then yeah, what's the point?
[00:33:34] Lori: Let's learn and, and grow. Because that's, and people in general who are willing to say, okay, I failed. I'm human. I think that we are so much more apt to challenge ourselves and
[00:33:48] Lori: take that first step
[00:33:50] Lori: because there's so much fear in not being able to just, there's so much fear in the mindset of, well, if I do this now, if I start this now, if I start listening to my body and [00:34:00] I screw up, then that's gonna send me into a tailspin.
[00:34:03] Lori: But instead of going into it and saying, I will screw
[00:34:06] Helen: Mm.
[00:34:07] Lori: I always screw up. I mean, I, I can tell myself all the time, like, you, you gotta do this perfectly, Lori. No, you don't. There's two, two versions of us, right? It's like we could talk to ourselves like, we would somebody that we just despise or we could talk to ourselves like we would a friend
[00:34:21] Lori: and just say, no, you won't
[00:34:23] Helen: Yeah, yeah,
[00:34:25] Lori: Give it a try and learn along the way.
[00:34:27] Lori: 'cause that's what it's all about. It's learning along the
[00:34:28] Lori: way. I really, before we recap this episode, it's been fantastic. And again, I just thank you so much.
[00:34:36] Lori: I, I know honestly, Helen Yes. You gotta come back for a two-parter. I wanna talk to you about your personal
[00:34:42] Lori: experience if you're willing to share, because your mention of going cold Turkey, I remember Oprah
[00:34:47] Lori: saying this, like her addiction was food.
[00:34:49] Lori: And I remember Oprah saying it's, we need
[00:34:52] Helen: Mm
[00:34:52] Lori: And this was years ago. We need food. How do I have this relationship with food that is more [00:35:00] balanced and I'm totally paraphrasing, but more balanced and be able to survive and find this new healthy eating pattern for me? Because if you don't know anything about Oprah, Oprah has struggled with her weight and has been very public
[00:35:13] Lori: about it for most of her life and struggled with food
[00:35:15] Lori: honestly. And so it's like, how do we. Find this balance and this healthy relationship with food when we need it, and we're used to using it
[00:35:25] Lori: to cope.
[00:35:29] Helen: The foundation. I love that question. The foundation is always beginning with, let's find out what your body actually wants. The first thing we do when I work with somebody is let's get clear on the difference between hunger and an urge to eat. That has nothing to do with hunger. So some people might call that a binge judge, but not everybody binges.
[00:35:49] Helen: Sometimes they're just overeating. What is the difference? And they feel physiologically different. Hunger's usually in the belly. And this is what I, the first few calls are somebody we are working on reconnecting so they can hear it. [00:36:00] And also, what did my body ask for? And most of the time people are blown away when they realize their body's asking for really quote unquote healthy food and it's, which is delightful.
[00:36:10] Helen: So that's a big thing. 'cause a lot of people think, no, my body is actually driving me in this terrible direction and forcing me to eat sugar. It's just not true. I've never met anybody for whom that's true. So once we start to hear our body's hunger, fullness and what it wants, that's step one because everything else that isn't, that then gets to into section two, which is right.
[00:36:32] Helen: All these other urges to eat. I'm not hungry, but I want to eat. What's that all about? And that's where we get into the, the weeds where we start going, okay, right, what was I thinking? What are the emotions? And that's where we do that work. But the foundation of all of it is, can I tell the difference? And I think most people can't because not only have we lost connection, because maybe we've been restricting since we were 12, or maybe I was in a family where we had to finish the food on our plate.[00:37:00]
[00:37:00] Helen: And so we were forced over the fullness signals from a very young age. No blame. It is what it is. People do it. But it means that we lost that connection and that ability to, to feel those signals. And then I think with the diet culture, we lost the ability to trust. 'cause you don't have to spend long on any kind of Facebook feed or on YouTube before you've seen a million things telling.
[00:37:21] Helen: You can't trust your body and your body left to its own devices just wants to make you obese or it's not true. We've just lost the ability to listen. So I love the nutritional advice out there, but the danger is letting nutritionists tell us how we need to eat as opposed to going, oh, that's interesting.
[00:37:37] Helen: I might try that. Let me see how my body responds. But we've just stopped listening to our body. We're just waiting for everybody else to just tell me how to eat. No, no, no. Unfortunately, we have to start with the listening piece and then we can work out what's going on everywhere else. So we've got a lot of actors working against us on this one, but you know, it's part of the joy.
[00:37:59] Helen: And [00:38:00] over time people start to get the information that actually when they listen to their body, so let's say it's eight o'clock in the morning and I check in with my body and I think I'm supposed to be eating a protein shake or whatever the leg is. And, and, but actually when I'm listening, I go, no. What I really feel like is a little bit of leftover curry from last night.
[00:38:20] Helen: I'll just use this as a weird example. Then let me see if I can listen to that and see what happens. And when we do listen, we may and we go, oh my God, now I feel satiated, I feel calm. I've got focus, I've got energy. This was exactly what my body wanted. But if I tried to force myself to have the wheat rock shot hands up, I've been there.
[00:38:38] Helen: Or the latest, whatever it is, the protein part of the shake, we may discover through. Again, this kind of curiosity and playfulness is. Oh, I was still naggingly. I was full, but I was unsatisfied 'cause I didn't really have what my body wanted. And the more we get that information, when we ignore what our body's asking for and we do what we think we should do, [00:39:00] we tend to end up in trouble.
[00:39:02] Helen: And that's powerful And I think a lot of people might, as they listen to that, think I have a feeling she might be right about that, but it's scary to try.
[00:39:10] Lori: I am. I am totally thinking that. I so appreciate you saying that. 'cause it's
[00:39:17] Helen: Yeah.
[00:39:18] Lori: It's so true. And I mean, in a perfect world there will be no outside noise. Nobody directing us on what to eat. It's just us. We have to make that decision. We've never learned from anybody
[00:39:28] Lori: else. This is what we're, I, oh, I felt that so
[00:39:32] Helen: Lovely.
[00:39:33] Lori: thank you so much for sharing that. And I totally screwed up in asking you that question. That's okay. I'm gonna leave this in here. I'm not gonna edit it out 'cause I made a mistake. What I really wanna know is, when you started this, I hear you saying, and your story is, you started listening to your body and that was your, the helpful tool for you.
[00:39:50] Lori: Is that correct?
[00:39:51] Helen: yes. So I had an aha moment, which will feed in nicely to what we've just been talking about, listening to your body, where I. My business had [00:40:00] shut down. My life was a mess. I was broke. Everything was a disaster. But I knew that I didn't want to continue anything before I actually attended to, really attended to, and put all my focus and energy.
[00:40:11] Helen: I was complete workaholic and I was always wanting to put energy into my, trying to stop my relat, my binging and purging. But there was always something bigger and I just thought, this has got to be my core focus right now. And I, but I was thinking to myself, well, what do I do? I've tried therapy. I've been to AA meeting, I've tried everything.
[00:40:28] Helen: I thought I'd tried everything. And this whisper and higher power, whatever you want to call it, I just heard this whisper say, I just wanna eat when I'm hungry and stop when I'm full and not think about it in between. And I then got this real clarity when I thought, but I'm not doing that. I'm calorie counting.
[00:40:47] Helen: I'm restricting all morning. I'm ignoring my hunger. I'm denying myself certain foods. And that's when I personally was like. Why didn't I try something different? This is [00:41:00] really scary. 'cause my belief was if I do that, I'm just gonna balloon out of control because I was thinking, contrast my body, it's gonna make me fat, blah, blah, blah, blah.
[00:41:09] Helen: But I stumbled into this. You know what, I've got nothing to lose. Worst case, if I get really big and that's horrible for me, I'll just go back to throwing up my food again. I was literally just thinking, I'll give it six months. If this doesn't work, what have I got to lose? So it was, I had to, I had to do something that was so scary and that was let go of the control, ironically.
[00:41:32] Helen: And I thought I was losing control, but actually I had to let go of the hyper control that was driving the binge eating. And that was scary. And I tell you what, Laurie, it wasn't easy and it didn't, I didn't ma manage it overnight, but the way I got there was to say, you know what I've tried, I. To be perfect in a day.
[00:41:51] Helen: It doesn't work. What if I could just do get the first two hours? What if I could just get through the first two hours where I try and listen to what my body [00:42:00] wants without losing control, without trying to restrict it? And then, and that was hard for me. I mean, I'd wake up and all, I was thinking about food at 6:00 AM and I'd sometimes I'd be binging before I'd even, before eight o'clock.
[00:42:13] Helen: So, but then once that got easy, then I could build, okay, geez, getting to eight o'clock. No problem. Let's go to 10, let's go to 12. And I would just be checking in and I would practice, can I check in with my body? And then can I practice getting my focus off my food and onto life? 'cause I didn't, I didn't wanna think about food.
[00:42:30] Helen: So I took my definition of freedom and I thought, well, if that was triathlon, what would be the skills? I was like, well, I've gotta practice listening to my hunger. Then I've gotta practice trying to hear if I can feel when I'm full. I've gotta practice giving myself what my body actually wants. What is that even like?
[00:42:46] Helen: And then can I practice not thinking about it all the time? Well, what does that look like? Well, what am I gonna think about? Okay, life. So you can hear a lot of the things that I kind of stumbled into very much drove this the way I coach clients now, [00:43:00] and I'm sure I didn't come up with that all on my own.
[00:43:02] Helen: I'm pretty sure I've probably read books and I've listened to things where all of that information became my own little unique way of figuring it out. But I needed practical tools. I'd done so much therapy, I'd healed lots of wounds. I'd forgiven all sorts of people, but I still was losing control. So I needed the practical stuff, which I love.
[00:43:21] Helen: You can see I get passionate when I talk about it, but that was my journey. And it was slow and it was bumpy, and I got really stuck at the sort of 5:00 PM mark, which is a danger zone for a lot of people where they just start falling off the horse. But I just persisted. I thought, I'm not going to keep going until this is easy.
[00:43:40] Helen: And then I got to dinner, and then I stayed at dinner for a long time. I was like, holding, oh, oh, I just have one binge today. But eventually I was like, Bennett, you can get through this. Come on, you've got the skills. Let's push through. And it was still a bumpy ride, but eventually it became easy,
[00:43:56] Lori: yeah. Oh, I love that so much. 'cause it's really [00:44:00] you versus you, me versus
[00:44:01] Lori: me. It's, coming to this relationship with ourselves I think really is, is a big, I know is a big part of
[00:44:08] Lori: it. Being mindful with ourselves and coaching ourselves in those moments with more compassion
[00:44:14] Lori: and more curiosity.
[00:44:16] Lori: Compassion and curiosity goes a long
[00:44:17] Lori: way. Practicality for me, oh boy, that's it.
[00:44:21] Lori: I cannot get all the tools. My toolbox cannot be weighed down. It has to be very light for me to do
[00:44:27] Helen: I love that. Yeah.
[00:44:28] Lori: so I really appreciate you seeing this. This was such a great conversation, Helen. We're, I know we're gone a lot longer than we thought, but you know, I wanna talk to you about the one thing that we were talking about before we
[00:44:40] Lori: started recording coming off of dry
[00:44:42] Lori: January for
[00:44:43] Helen: Oh, gosh, yes.
[00:44:44] Lori: and people realizing, where they are, maybe with their nutrition, maybe they picked up their eating a little bit more in dry January because they were removing alcohol.
[00:44:53] Lori: Maybe they turn too, too much sugar and now they're at this place where, okay,
[00:44:58] Lori: I'm moving forward. We've [00:45:00] got a brand new year still ahead of
[00:45:02] Helen: mm mm.
[00:45:03] Lori: Talk to me about somebody who may be at that point where they just realized like, oh, nutrition is a thing for me.
[00:45:10] Helen: Whew. Well, I've worked with a lot of people who've had exactly that experience. So they've given up alcohol, maybe cigarettes too, whatever the thing may be. And then they go, good grief. Now I've got this food issue. And a bit of despair can kick in and people can feel, oh my goodness, am I just really it?
[00:45:29] Helen: I'm a complete disaster. And I would say, you're not, your food is telling you there was something that still needed healing. And by taking away the alcohol, all it's done is exposed to you that there was some deeper stuff that needed work. And so, yeah, it's not ideal and you've still got work ahead of you and congratulations.
[00:45:49] Helen: If you've given up drinking, that's fantastic. And okay, let's take a deep breath. Let's be kind and let's just acknowledge there's still work to be done, and let's start finding the [00:46:00] resources or learning or reaching out for help to. Figure out what was underneath all of this all along. And spoiler alert, it probably goes all the way back to the moment at which we started believing we weren't lovable enough, we weren't worthy enough, we didn't belong.
[00:46:15] Helen: And we felt, yeah, not lovable, not enough, and, and now we've gotta do all the healing around that finally, because that's actually where the magic really happens. And it's required because otherwise if we don't do that, I could even have somebody stop all their binging and or purging if that's their thing.
[00:46:34] Helen: But if we haven't really got to the root and got to that place, so we started with this, it's the self-acceptance piece, skill number 12. It's if we haven't started working on that and turning it around, chances are we'll just bump into another addictive or compulsive behavior because we are just trying to numb out that horrible feeling of not enoughness with something.
[00:46:56] Helen: And so the food is actually, if you are there. [00:47:00] I know it's ugh, and you think, oh, I've got still work to do, but get excited because this is where the real healing is gonna happen. This is can be the final frontier for a lot of people. And if somebody has stopped giving up drinking, you have got willpower in your back.
[00:47:17] Helen: You've been through that already. You can be proud and think, I'm gonna take some of what I've already learned and I can start applying this. And the only thing I would add to that is it's not enough to just try and go cold Turkey and just put yourself on the most restrictive diet. It's probably better to have a real lookie what was driving this all along, which might go take you back to being 12, 14, 16, whatever it is, or, or before.
[00:47:40] Helen: And that's okay. It is what it is. But it's awesome because then we get to a place where we say, well, I'd never want anybody to go through that. Oh my goodness, have it got me here where I might be 45, 50, wherever. And sure I've lost a lot of, lot lost life, but I have regrets about what I've lost. Hey, at least at 45 I [00:48:00] can, whoever's listening, I can actually go, well, damn, I don't mind.
[00:48:03] Helen: I'll get in a bikini. I'll walk down and be, I don't care. Like I'm cool, I'm cool with me. And I know a lot of people, a lot of women specifically who don't ever feel that, who go to their graves feeling not enough and feeling too fat. And you know what? Sure. I can't get back the 20 odd dear struggle. I can't undo it.
[00:48:21] Helen: I wish I could. I could go back in time. I'd love that, but I can at least really work hard to enjoy the present, and I'm really grateful for that. So yeah, if somebody's listening and they think, oh, crikey, I would say, you know what? Face it. Look at it. It's time. It's time. You're at The Final Frontier. This is the last one.
[00:48:42] Lori: Beautiful final words there. Helen, that is fantastic. I am going to take some of the things that I've learned from you today and incorporate them
[00:48:50] Lori: into my day because you really helped me work through some things as we're having this conversation, and I know you're gonna help one listener out there [00:49:00] today really start to change their mindset about food healing, their relationship with food, and accepting and loving themselves.
[00:49:07] Lori: So I really, really thank you for being here. It's been amazing. Talk to me about what you have to offer the listener in 2024. Do you have a program?
[00:49:19] Helen: I, I don't have a pro, I'm busy working on creating a, a course for anybody who can't work with me directly. But I did record a 90 odd minute masterclass, which you can find on my website. So if anybody's interested in going deeper into, we only touch the surface, be lovely, to take them deeper they can access that.
[00:49:39] Helen: So if Helen bennett.co, or just, I mean, my name is hard to spell, just Google Coach Helen Food Freedom, or even you'll find me on the socials. All you need to do is put those words together and I would say. The first access point would be the masterclass. It actually comes with a training where I guide people to listen to that hunger we were talking about earlier.
[00:49:59] Helen: [00:50:00] They can begin practicing it immediately. That's my 80 20. A lot of people make huge changes just by starting to reconnect. But if anybody wants to take it further and work with me, then they can find me at the website as well and just DM in. We jump on a call and then we go from there. But one day I, I'm working on a book and the course and that I'm, I really wanna design those in a way that would help people if they never met me, be able to put into practice the practical things we're talking about and start to see the results.
[00:50:28] Helen: And as long as they can combine that with time, repetition, and resilience, the willingness to keep going, no matter how many slip ups you have, they will get there. They will start to feel that freedom. It's inevitable. The hard part is not giving up.
[00:50:42] Lori: Thank you
[00:50:43] Lori: Helen. It was such a joy having you
[00:50:45] Helen: thank you so much, Laurie. It's been an absolute joy of being honest with you.
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Help me spread the word!
There is another option besides drinking in midlife.
If you liked this episode and want to take a few minutes to support the podcast, I want to encourage you to leave a positive rating and review on Apple Podcasts.
So many women out there don’t know there is an “alcohol-free” option and are struggling with their drinking.
Your support will help these women find the podcast this week and learn about an alcohol-free lifestyle later in life.
➡️Click here, scroll to the bottom of the page, tap to rate with five stars, and select “Write a Review.”
I read my reviews and will hug you when I see yours.
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Thank you!