My name is Emily, I am a Holistic Nutritional Health Coach who specialises in healing unhealthy food relationships.
Having struggled with disordered eating for 11 years, I was able to completely transform my food relationship from something that stopped me from enjoying my life, to my healthiest being that brings me freedom and peace!
My unhealthy relationship with food started when I was 14.
It started when I realised if I changed the way I ate, I could change the way I looked by losing weight. I would look up the latest fads and diets for the quickest fix to lose weight, and tried them all. I started eating a restrictive diet and exercised to burn calories rather than for pleasure. I was obsessed with food and how I looked.. and I was skinny as hell!
I continued this for four years, all the while, what I ate and what I looked like took up most of my thinking and brain power.
Going to university changed all of this, and not for the better.
After years of restricting, I entered an environment where everything was consumed in excess by everyone around me, and I really fell into it as at first it was liberating and fun. I wasn't used to letting go and letting myself enjoy 'forbidden' things but since everyone else was doing it I felt validated by that and quickly jumped on the bandwagon.
I drank most nights, I smoked a pack of cigarettes a day, I ate whatever I wanted at all times of the day (including drunk food in the early hours of the morning). For a while this worked for me, I was young and my body adapted, and I had a lot of fun.
At least I was having a good time until my health took such a turn.
At the end of my first year I had gained 13kg, my childhood eczema came back all over my arms, I had acne, I lost my period, I was always tired, I got headaches easily and I also had terrible anxiety.
After restricting my eating habits for so long as a teenager, being at uni felt like I could let go of watching what I ate and indulge in the things I denied myself before and it was validated by everyone around me doing the same thing.
The rebellion against the restriction created even more health issues, and was certainly not the answer to stopping it.
My lifestyle calmed down over the rest of my time at uni, I started looking after my body but there were lingering health issues that needed to be addressed. I knew that there was a link between my eating habits and the health problems, but I did not appreciate how strong this link was, or that my lifestyle and diet had actually created these issues, especially the anxiety.
When I left uni and started working in London my lifestyle changed massively. I was barely drinking, I started doing yoga and exercising regularly, I was sleeping properly and taking time for myself…
The one thing I couldn’t seem to fix was my relationship with food.
In an attempt to feel healthy (and skinny) again I returned back to my 14 year old self and starting extreme dieting.
I ate so clean, rarely had any 'forbidden' or 'bad' foods and when I was having 'good' days (ie barely eating) I felt GREAT!
Although this didn’t last.
I would deprive myself so much that when I finally ate properly I would quickly descend into overindulging in food. I would have one 'bad' thing and label that day a bad day and continue to eat a whole packet of cookies, crisps, ice cream, chocolate- the list goes on...
After these episodes of overeating I would feel so guilty that I would go back to the extreme restriction. Which ALWAYS resulted in ultimately overeating.
This continued until I got into a vicious cycle of dieting and binging. I would be ‘good’ for most of the day, whether that was eating ‘healthy’ foods or not eating at all, and then binge on whatever I could get my hands on when I couldn’t fight the urge to eat anymore. Or I would go a few days of being ‘healthy’ and then reward myself with a few days of the food I had so avidly avoided.
This carried on for so long that it became a part of my life. It absorbed me entirely sometimes, food was all I thought about.
The problem was that throughout all of this, I was not listening to my body. I was letting my mind dictate all of my eating habits based on what I researched, what I thought would be good for me, and not once did I think about how I felt after eating.
This changed in 2021 when I was diagnosed with PCOS. PCOS is a condition that affects hormone levels in women, the ovaries secrete abnormal levels of androgens which in turn create reproductive hormonal imbalances. Whilst there is no cure for PCOS, lifestyle shifts can have a huge effect in minimising the symptoms.
This diagnosis was a turning point for me.
I decided that I would eat an anti inflammatory diet, avoiding processed food, sugar, meat, dairy and refined carbs. I knew from my experience that cutting out things completely from my diet didn’t work for me, so instead of not eating these things at all, I would focus on incorporating the good things more. So I focused on mostly eating whole foods, vegetables, grains, nuts, seeds and allowing myself the other things if I wanted them.
For me, the key part of using my diagnosis to heal my eating habits came from tuning into my body.
I stopped making it about what I should or should not be eating, the calories, even the nutrition and came back to what I needed to eat to FEEL my best.
I checked in with my body. I listened to what it needed.
I started to understand how eating lots of sugar made me feel, so I slowly stopped binging on sugary food, because I didn’t want to feel like that.
This was just one step in my healing journey.
I started looking into my food relationship holistically, delving into the root of WHY my relationship with food was so unhealthy and distorted.
I went back beyond the 14 year old that went on her first extreme diet and looked to the years prior that led her there.
I considered why the diet binge cycle became such a prominent part of my life, and how other parts of my life fed into it to keep it there.
All of these things healed my relationship with food.
I now see food as sustenance. I don’t obsess over it anymore. I eat when I’m hungry and stop when I’m full. I’m able to make the right choices for my body, knowing what will make me feel my best. I can enjoy food without overthinking it or feeling guilty. I have bundles of energy.
Having said that, I do not have the 'perfect' diet. I still enjoy sugar and fried foods and lots of the things that unqualified people on Instagram tell us are making us fat.
I don't actually think the perfect diet exists. You can eat the 'cleanest' diet in the world and still be unhealthy. Still feel bad about yourself. Still be unhappy.
Change happened for me when I realised it's not food that I was obsessed with, it was the feeling that food gave me. It was a comfort when I was lonely. It made me happy when I was sad. It made me feel powerful and strong when I restricted myself from it.
Food was not the problem, it was me using food to fill the gaps.
Once I recognised that I could see food for what it was. I could check back into how food made me feel and use that for me not against me.
I learnt the difference between the foods that make me feel good and healthy in my body and the ones that don't serve me.
I can also proudly say that over the last two years I have reversed most of my PCOS symptoms.
When I started my healing journey, every other part of my life also improved. My relationships, my career, my confidence, my mental health.
I am my healthiest and happiest self.
If there is one thing you can take from my story, it is that there is always hope.
There was a time where I thought I would never be able to have just one cookie without eating the whole packet. Or not starve myself the day after eating a big dinner. Or plan my meals for the next day when I fell asleep at night.
Disordered eating doesn’t come from a lack of willpower, it’s the result of many facets of our lives that we might not even realise.
Once we start to unpick why we developed these unhealthy food relationships and which parts of our lives keep them there, then we have the map to transform them.
I dedicate myself whole heartedly to helping those who have experienced unhealthy food relationships, and give them hope that it is possible to change.
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