Stephanie Dodier of “Going Beyond the Food” has been a guest on my podcast many times and our conversations have always been honest and cover a variety of topics. Today, we talked about the toxicity that exists in the world of eating disorders, black and white thinking, backlash from the medical profession, what it means to really do your own trauma work and how social justice is an important part of healing our relationship with food and our bodies.
In this episode you will learn:
1. Why I call trauma work, the new “healthism”
2. How black and white thinking has caused an us vs. them mentality in the work with people with food addiction, emotional eating and binge eating.
3. Why the desperation for a thinner body continues to be paired with being happy and being healthy.
Guest Info:
Stephanie Dodier is a Clinical Nutritionist CNP, Certified Intuitive Eating Counselor, host of two top-ranking podcasts in the non-diet industry and creator of the Going Beyond The Food Method™️. She founded Undiet Your Life, a global coaching and online training platform focused on helping women make peace with food and their body so that they can live a fulfilling life… right now! She is also the founder of Undiet Your Coaching Practice, a global professional training platform.
To Contact Stephanie: https://www.stephaniedodier.com/
Stephanie’s podcast: https://www.stephaniedodier.com/podcast/
Get a free copy of The Food Addiction Recovery Workbook” (I pay for the book, you pay for postage/ handling) foodaddictionrecoveryworkbook.com
Use this link to get your free e-book of “The Food Addiction Recovery Workbook.” (you pay for handling charge only),
https://www.foodaddictionrecoveryworkbook.com/ebook
Hi everyone and welcome to the show. Today I have a special guest who, if you’ve been listening to my podcast for a number of years, you probably know who she is, but she and I have not talked since before the pandemic. This is Stephanie Dodier, she’s a clinical nutritionist, CNP, certified Intuitive Eating counselor, host of two top ranking podcasts in the non-diet industry, and creator of Going Beyond the Food Method. She founded Undiet Your Life, a global coaching and online training platform focused on helping women make peace with food and their body so that they can live a fulfilling life right now. And she is also the founder of Undiet Your Coaching Practice, a global professional training platform.
Dr. Carolyn: Welcome to the show again, Stephanie .
Stephanie: I’m so happy to be here.
Dr. Carolyn: Yes, so much has happened since we last talked. It’s been, you know, a whirlwind for a lot of people, but it sounds like you told me you’ve been thriving during the pandemic, so, so I’m jealous and I kind of hate you a little bit.
Stephanie: We’re gonna help you change that in the next 45 minutes.
Dr. Carolyn: Okay. Please, please do. So, I’d like to just make the topics here be under the umbrella of what has changed in our industry. You know, working with people with binge eating or food addiction, or emotional eating, etc. And there’s been, in the past, three to five years has been a lot of movement everything from, an increase in the social justice component, new diagnoses like atypical anorexia coming up and more. So let’s start by just talking about how some of these changes may have impacted your practice.
Stephanie: For me, I would say that it has helped get a broader awareness to the work that we do. Now, how people perceive that work is entirely up to them. But I think more and more globally in the world, we acknowledge that the way we have been dealing with food, control of food and body image is problematic. Like the way we were doing things cannot continue. Now, the change that needs to happen is where, the variation between them and us happen. But at least I think we’ve moved forward in acknowledging that it cannot continue in the same way there’s a problem.
Dr. Carolyn: Yeah. Well, you mentioned that them versus us, and I think that that has caused a lot of toxicity in the work. You know, maybe you can speak better to that, but I see, whether it be on social media or you know, in, in speaking with my own clients, people are having trouble deciding which camp to be in. You know, am I what some people call fat activist, or am I someone who just wants to make peace with food and my body and live my life? I don’t wanna carry a flag, you know, etc. But it’s become even more of separation, I think, and some toxicity as well between groups. What are your thoughts?
Stephanie: My thoughts are, that’s human behavior 101. Like what we’re seeing is one of the primary differences in how humans cope with life, which is black and white thinking, all or nothing. There’s a right way and then there’s a wrong way. And if you are an activist, that’s the right way. And if you’re just a human being wants not have food problem anymore, that’s the wrong way to the other people. What I have found the most fascinating when I started to look in our industry is that people carried the same behavior before their healing of a relationship to food and after.
Dr. Carolyn: Okay. Say more about that.
Stephanie: So black and white thinking or perfectionism or right way or wrong way. Back before when they were in diet culture, they thought there’s a right way of eating and a wrong way of eating.
Dr. Carolyn: There’s good food. There’s bad food. Yeah.
Stephanie: There’s good bodies and there’s bad bodies.
Dr. Carolyn: Yeah.
Stephanie: Right. Which is what we call in psychology a filter. We go through life, (I’m putting glasses on my nose right now) thinking, yeah, there’s a right way or wrong way, and then so they go through their healing and they continue to carry that life filter, that there’s a wrong and a right way. And then they apply it to their healing and how they go out into the world and portray their healing. Like everybody should be a fat activist and everybody should be an intuitive eater. And everybody who diets you’re bad people.
Dr. Carolyn: Yes, exactly. But I think that filter often comes from, a history of trauma putting on the glasses is like when you’ve been traumatized as a child. It’s like you’re walking around with dark glasses on or rose colored glasses and everything to you looks dark. And you, you’re convinced that you’re seeing it correctly because that’s what you see through your lenses. And I think that’s one of the issues that I think a lot of people don’t think they need to address that. And we also see a lack of experienced therapists who know how to deal with people who are of size, like you said, fat phobic therapists, just like they’re fat phobic medical doctors. I mean, in the medical profession, it’s, it’s exhausting to go to a doctor and even for myself, you know, as a doctor, I’m going in there and I’m talking to a colleague and they’re saying to me, you know, we’re gonna refer you for weight loss counseling, or we’re gonna refer you to, or you, if you just lose, X number of pounds this or that health problem would go away or that health problem would be better. And I, really identify with my patients because it’s demoralizing to have, your doctor who you want help from sit there and for 10 or 15 minutes talk about some stupid diet. And I’m not going to even mention the name of the fad diets I’ve been pitched in the last year, but they’re numerous.
Stephanie: For me, I think it’s a sign. It’s a clue. That even for us as experts in the field of disordered eating or eating disorders, in your case, our industry is missing a very important element of the problem and the solution. Which is globally what we call mindset or cognitive behavior therapy for trauma, like how our belief system and our thoughts create the current experience we have of life and will continue to impact the experience of life. We may become an intuitive eater, but we’re not gonna be “happier” if we carry the same way of looking at life. And that’s what I have found.
Dr. Carolyn: Yes.
Stephanie: And then in our industry, what happened internally, we have people like literally eating up each other. Because they’re showing up to the world where we should show up globally holding each other’s hand.
But because they haven’t done their own work at the thought and the mindset level, they’re like eating each other. And that to me is just a major sign that we need to layer in a different approach. The disordered eating or eating disorder beyond just the food.
Dr. Carolyn: Yeah. There’s just so much anger.
Stephanie: Yeah.
Dr. Carolyn: You can’t really, and, and this is reflected in the broader world at large on numerous other topics, but in our industry, you can’t have a conversation with someone who is on the “other side” they don’t wanna talk to you. Unless you agree with them or, and even if you agree with them, they don’t wanna talk to you unless you look like them. And, you know, I do a lot of work in diversity and anti-racism and we see the same thing and it’s hard to break through that because I think people feel so justified because they have been discriminated against – weight stigma’s real. So they have been harmed and so they have, a lot of energy on both self-protection and also keeping the wall up. So one of the things that I’ve been noticing, especially over the past year, is what I’m calling a backlash from the medical profession.
Stephanie: Yeah.
Dr. Carolyn: I’m one of the ones who have, said in my podcast that doctors are the number two cause of weight stigma and that, we don’t get trained in nutrition in medical school. We end, I just a moment ago that we were preaching about diets and promoting fad diets to clients. But I, I also feel like now maybe because of all the shifts in, in the industry, there have been so many doctors who are prescribing weight loss drugs. You know, there are a couple of new ones on the market and I have so many patients coming to me on these weight loss drugs, which are not like taking an aspirin, or a Tylenol. And then so many who are convinced that they need to have surgery and that’s the only way they’ll ever be happy, and we know how that usually ends up. What are you seeing?
Stephanie: It’s very interesting because you’re talking about that we had a reporter who did the research over the last six months in Canada on Ozempic. I don’t know if it’s the same name in the United States.
Dr. Carolyn: Yeah It is.
Stephanie: And he researched why in Canada, because it’s like national healthcare in Canada, why there’s such an increase in prescriptions being written for Ozempic. And he went and interviewed doctors as to why they’re prescribing this even though patients are not diabetic. And you know what the number one reason came back.
Dr. Carolyn: Uh-uh, what?
Stephanie: Doctor are afraid of public review and being assessed publicly. I guess there’s some doctor rating system out there that’s very prominent.
Dr. Carolyn: Yeah. Like if you look up a doctor on the website, it’ll say one to five stars and then it’ll have comments.
Stephanie: Yeah. So they’re, they’re very concerned in needing other people’s opinion and they’re afraid some, not all but a portion of doctor are afraid of saying no to the patient, even though they know this is not the solution, they’re afraid of saying no. I thought, ah, isn’t that a great representation of human behavior? Because I’m talking like as a fat person for 25 years of my life, I ruled my life based on opinions of other people.
Dr. Carolyn: Yeah.
Stephanie: I had to do the work in order for me to be completely neutral about my body, it was beyond the work of body image. It was shifting the way that I interact with the world and instead of seeking external validation, giving my own validation to myself. I’m like, they’re still human being like, this is approval to me, that those doctors are the same people as we are they’re just behaving like human beings behave, wanting approval from the world, and they’re now unfortunately able to prescribe Ozempic to people because they want approval from their patients.
Dr. Carolyn: Yeah. Another thing about Ozempic that came out in the medical news is that one of the ways it works is by making people not like food.
Stephanie: Yeah
Dr. Carolyn: So to me, I mean, eating is a survival instinct. You know, we eat to survive, just like procreation is survival of the species. So if you are taking, a drug that makes you not like eating or not want to eat, that seems like the wrong thing to do. It just intuitively seems like the wrong thing to do.
Stephanie: Can we talk about fatphobia in the medical world?
Dr. Carolyn: Mm-hmm.
Stephanie: Right? The layer that the reporter didn’t talk about in that like very well done news broadcasting is the concept of fatphobia, and I’m like, yet again.
Dr. Carolyn: Yeah.
Stephanie: Probably because the reporter is fat phobic himself. It was a him. It was a he. He didn’t see that. But because I understand fatphobia, the layer on the weight loss drug added on top of validation from the rating online is the fact that the doctor think they’re justified because fat is bad.
Dr. Carolyn: Yes, that is….
Stephanie: Fat is dangerous. Right?
Dr. Carolyn: Yeah.
Stephanie: So the work, if you wanna think about root work, like what do we need to do? It’s not education on the drug for doctors. I mean, well, we could talk about what should happen there, but it is educating doctor on fatphobia.
Dr. Carolyn: Yeah.
Stephanie: That’s the real solution.
Dr. Carolyn: If they were only open to that.
Stephanie: Well now we can talk about the educational structure and the impact of the pharmaceutical world on like the, there’s a whole reason why it’s not happening.
Dr. Carolyn: Well, I was invited to speak at a conference on, you know, well, we used the O word.
Stephanie: Yeah.
Dr. Carolyn: In Korea and they gave me, I think 30 minutes. And so I, and sorry, was invited to talk about food addiction. I ended my talk topic talking about weight stigma and how dangerous it is and what a negative effect it has. And after my talk there were just crickets in the room. Like nobody raised your hand for questions. It, it was just, I felt like I was all alone. Hello? Are you still out there? But I think that’s definitely a problem and you don’t get a lot of acceptance at when you apply to speak at conferences for physicians. If you are saying that health at every size is a possibility.
Stephanie: And can we layer the fact that you’re fat. Right. So you don’t fit the bill. So you have like, but I think what, what I wanna say to you is the work you’ve done at that conference will lead to change in their doctors in years to come. You’ve planted a seed.
Dr. Carolyn: Yeah, that’s what I’ve been telling myself. But it’s a lonely place in the medical profession. Yeah. If you a healthy at every size doctor, which I, most of us can’t even use that term anymore cause it’s trademarked. But that’s it.
Stephanie: That’s a whole other conversation.
Dr. Carolyn: That’s a whole another conversation. But beyond just the prescription of drugs and the surgery, there are now, once again, as there were 25 years ago, weight loss clinics popping up all over the country and doctors who only do weight loss, which as you know, is gonna be a multi bazillion dollar, thing. So, yet another time in which people are making money off of this problem.
Stephanie: You know what’s interesting? I’m gonna give you another perspective on this. Uh, you know, I run a mentorship for health professionals to integrate the non diet approach. Every single cohort I had a weight loss surgery director come into the program.
Dr. Carolyn: Ahhhh..
Stephanie: Both of them are like 20 plus years experienced dietitian.
Dr. Carolyn: Okay.
Stephanie: And they ran the clinic for the doctor. I don’t know the structure, but it seemed like the doctor were doing the surgery and they ran the clinic and they did the admission. Yeah. And both of them had an awakening after 20 years, and then they both left the industry.
Dr. Carolyn: Oh my goodness.
Stephanie: I’m just saying that’s the other coin that also is happening at the same time.
Dr. Carolyn: Well, that’s a good coin. Now that you mentioned it, when I spoke in Korea, the only person who after about three minutes came to the microphone to ask a question, was a registered dietician.
Stephanie: So I’m happy it’s one of them, the one from the last cohort is now a, she’s part of, she went back to the field of education. She’s now mentoring dieticians for a university.
Dr. Carolyn: Oh wonderful.
Stephanie: And she’s like, this is to me like this is the place to be. She’s now gonna change for the rest of her career, teaching the mindset around health at every size, intuitive eating to hundreds if not thousands of dieticians. To me, this is how we change the structure in the world.
Dr. Carolyn: Yeah, you’re right about that. It is like a dropping a pebble in a pond and it ripples out. Let’s talk a little bit about trauma.
Stephanie: Yeah.
Dr. Carolyn: People, so many, well, patients with all the eating disorders, from anorexia to bulimia, binge eating to compulsive overeating.. All of those, the studies have shown over and over high prevalence of especially childhood trauma and that when you’ve had childhood trauma, it changes your belief systems. It changes your response to your emotions and it leads to the behaviors that people are struggling with. And what I’m seeing shift now is people are aware of that they’re like, oh yeah, I have trauma. I need to work on my trauma. But there’s a misunderstanding about what trauma work involves and what it takes and I call trauma work the new healthism because I’m seeing a lot of patients who come in and they say, oh, well I’m planning to get that gastric bypass surgery or the gastric sleeve, after I work with you for a few months. You know, so I’m have once a month sessions with you and then after that, after three months or even four months, maybe it’ll take five months, I don’t know. Then I’ll go and have my surgery.
Stephanie: Yeah. You know what’s interesting? So there’s two things I wanna talk about on this topic. The fact that it’s amazing news that there’s more and more understanding of the implication of trauma in the relationship to food. I think that’s amazing. I think the same problem is happening in that field and, and you will know to answer that better because I’m not in the research field, I’m more in the application world, but the people doing the research and writing the paper on trauma are still steeped in fatphobia.
Dr. Carolyn: Well, I mean, if they’re part of the culture, all of us are steeped in that phobia system.
Stephanie: But they’re not even aware that there is another point of view.
Dr. Carolyn: Yeah, that’s true. Yeah.
Stephanie: It’s, there’s a, when I say steeped for people listening, I mean, they’re still not aware that there could be another way of thinking.
Dr. Carolyn: Yeah.
Stephanie: And I’m seeing that in the application world where coaches training other coaches on trauma are fat phobic people. So it’s, they don’t see fatphobia bullying, fat shaming as a trauma they think, oh, that’s just the way life is – they should be shamed. They should be bullied. Like they don’t even see the impact of it.
Dr. Carolyn: Yeah. Well and the same with many of the patients I see who say, oh, I don’t have any trauma. And I say, well, you know, you were bullied as a child, right? Or you were shamed in your family at the dinner table, you were given a completely separate weight loss dinner and you were not allowed to have dessert and everybody else at the table was. And, and that’s, that’s a true story and you and I have millions of those, right? But they don’t see that as being traumatic.
Stephanie: Because that’s okay by culture, that’s how you solve the problem of fatness.
Dr. Carolyn: Yeah.
Stephanie: So can be trauma, that’s the right thing to do.
Dr. Carolyn: Parents wanna help their children.
Stephanie: Yes. And then two is wellness culture. Trauma is becoming a way of monetizing.
Dr. Carolyn: Oh gosh.
Stephanie: An aspect of wellness, just like a Ozempic.
Dr. Carolyn: We started on that.
Stephanie: But Ozempic was created for diabetes. Again, I’m not a, like, I’m not a doctor. It was created for diabetics. Yeah. And now we’re monetizing it for weight loss. Trauma is the same thing.
Dr. Carolyn: Yeah.
Stephanie: Now we’re monetizing trauma. And we’re creating something that you have to do, but you don’t understand what truly needs to be done because it’s just a way for wellness culture to make money.
Dr. Carolyn: Yeah, exactly. And I think there’s also a sense of fragility around doing trauma work. You know, like I can’t really see myself crying if I’m gonna do trauma work, or I don’t wanna dig deep into my emotions of shame or guilt or fear or whatever. You know, I just wanna have a surface approach to trauma work. Just a little bit.
Stephanie: Why do you think this is happening? We’ll, see if my point of view is the same as yours.
Dr. Carolyn: Why do I think it’s happening?
Stephanie: Yeah.
Dr. Carolyn: Yeah. I, I just think, like you said, I think part of it is human nature.
Stephanie: Yap.
Dr. Carolyn: That, you know, people are afraid of their trauma and they’re afraid of dealing with it, and they don’t understand that when you do trauma work, it’s not about going back and reliving your trauma. It’s really about recognizing that while your trauma happened to a child, you are now an adult. And so as an adult you have a different set of skills and abilities than you did as a child. But I think it’s frightening for a lot of people. I mean, I compare it to my DEI work, you know, working. And we talk about white fragility all the time, and it’s…
Stephanie: Bingo.
Dr. Carolyn: Yeah, it’s, so tell me what you wanted.
Stephanie: My perspective is this, and I train coaches, right? I don’t like, I, I train coaches on a trauma-informed approach of coaching, and my number one stance is you gotta do your own work.
Dr. Carolyn: Hello
Stephanie: You cannot be a trauma coach.
Dr. Carolyn: Yeah.
Stephanie: If you’re not willing to go deep in your own stuff.
Dr. Carolyn: Oh my God. This is one of my so big pet peeves because I train a lot of therapists coming up in the, when I worked in eating disorder treatment centers and many of them would not do their own work, and so they would just work on the surface with people. Oh yeah, she, she has a little trauma and yeah, we’ve talked about that, but we’re now moving on. And yes, you know, she’s not, you know, she didn’t binge today, so that means she’s healed. It’s like, no, that’s not how it works.
Stephanie: So I think that’s one element. And I think. I’m gonna go in the place where I’m not the expert, but in the medical world it’s often formalized, right? One plus two equal three, and then you do that when you’re talking about psychological work and nervous system work. It’s not a formula. It’s felt.
Dr. Carolyn: Yes, and it’s…
Stephanie: You have to have a sense of feeling and you have to bring safety. And that the way to bring safety to trauma work is having done your own work and knowing how it feels for people, it cannot be formalized.
Dr. Carolyn: Yeah.
Stephanie: The best trauma people are not necessarily licensed people, they’re always done their own work.
Dr. Carolyn: Yeah, that is true. A hundred percent. Every day you have to do your own work. And this is in all areas, you know, like I speak a lot in addiction conferences. And 85% of addiction treatment professionals have a history of trauma themselves. And how many of them do you think have done their own trauma work? Probably, I’d say 5% if we’re lucky. But you get in that position of power, and even though you’re still operating from the same traumatic reactivity, you’re the professional so you can justify it without doing your own work. And I think that’s a real issue. That, and, and we, you know, we see that a lot in the fact that psychologists and social workers, psychotherapists have not done their own work. They’re not required to, to get them.
Stephanie: And I think that’s where anger is created. Because when you, you like, we’ll take alcohol again, I’m not nowhere skilled as you. Like when you’ve done your trauma work and you understand how trauma can lead to an addiction, you understand that alcohol is not the problem.
Dr. Carolyn: Right.
Stephanie: It’s a human coming to the alcohol that uses alcohol, but in itself, alcohol is not the problem. Just like diets are not the problem it’s the reason why people use diets.
Dr. Carolyn: And I always say food is not the issue.
Stephanie: No.
Dr. Carolyn: It’s how we use the food, how we, and why we use the alcohol that causes the problem because lots of people drink and don’t have an alcohol use disorder. And that’s because there’s certain vulnerabilities that lead us to use alcohol or food in a certain way. And I think that’s, you know, that’s really not something that people focus on a lot. I have been successful in speaking a couple of times at the American Society of Addiction Medicine. So far, I haven’t gotten into any other medical conferences to talk about this.
Stephanie: It will come.
Dr. Carolyn: Oh, we can only hope. That’s trauma work. I tell my patients look for someone who’s a specialist if they want to seek therapy and may have an insurance I don’t take or people who call me from other states and I can’t see them. So I say, look for someone who has trauma credentials, and ask them, have they done their own work?
Stephanie: Yes. I would say, have they done their own work? Is as important as the credential.
Dr. Carolyn: Yeah, absolutely. And you know, I share all the time about my trauma and it’s on the internet in my TEDx.
Stephanie: Yep.
Dr. Carolyn: In my TEDxPleasantGrove talk. I talk about my trauma, which was, that was a very traumatic experience to go through doing that TEDx talking and realize how much racial trauma I had had growing up, you know, and being, you know, being willing to put that out there in real life and talk about that. That was tough for me.
Stephanie: When I do work on body image the last step I talk about is body liberation.
Dr. Carolyn: Yes.
Stephanie: This is when you’re able to use your own journey, like you’ve processed your own trauma, your own pain, enough that you can use it to help other people. And I think that’s what your TEDx talks put the, the bow on the gift.
Dr. Carolyn: Thank you. I feel that way too. I feel like my trauma, you know, my TEDx talk was called The Gifts of Intergenerational Trauma.
Stephanie: Yeah.
Dr. Carolyn: And I do feel that that’s one of the gifts when you do your own work, hopefully you’re, you know, a better person in your family and with your work. But more than anything, to be able to share the journey and the process that you went to. So let’s talk a little bit about the social justice component of our work. And I know you, you have done a lot of work in this area, so tell us what, how that impacts your work.
Stephanie: For me, I, I came up with a stance about a year and a half ago when internally we had, if you remember, the situation with Health at Every Size and Lindo Bacon.
Dr. Carolyn: Oh, yes.
Stephanie: It’s a year, year and a half ago and I had to do a lot of work on myself. Yeah.
Dr. Carolyn: Lindo Bacon was the original co-author of the book, Health At Every Size.
Stephanie: I realize as coaches, like I’m, I’m talking from the world of being a coach. We do social justice work with every one of our interventions with our clients. Now, that is when you are coaching from a cognitive behavior model at the thought and the belief level. We do social justice work. So when you can understand that and when you can’t understand you’re doing social justice work at the individual level so they can accept their own fat phobia, they can accept their own internalized identity, whatever that matchup like racial identity, sexual identity, size identity. You are doing social justice work at the individual level. And I wanna venture to say that’s probably one of the most powerful forms because individually those people go out into the world and they touch hundreds and hundreds of people. That’s my stance on it. My work as far going out into the world and doing social justice has moved into the world of using my story as a way of helping other people in their own journey.
Dr. Carolyn: So how did you internalize the issues that came up with Lindo Bacon.
Stephanie: I saw her as a very traumatized individual.
Dr. Carolyn: Sorry, say again.
Stephanie: I saw an individual (Lindo Bacon) that was very traumatized and unfortunately had not yet done work because it wasn’t accessible to them. Because they didn’t understand that and the, their response was typical response of someone that feels attacked.
Dr. Carolyn: Yeah.
Stephanie: Right. They responded with anger with more attack.
Dr. Carolyn: Yeah.
Stephanie: Which makes total sense when your trauma is activated, when, when you understand..
Dr. Carolyn: That’s, that’s a trauma reaction. Absolutely.
Stephanie: I had nothing but compassion for those folks because they literally were, they felt attacked at the most visceral part of themselves. and they responded in the only way they know, which is more pain.
Stephanie: I’m gonna speak for my own identity as a fat person. So if we want to change the world in an acceptance of fatness, the way to change the world is not for me to be angry at the world. That is stigmatizing me for my fatness. Yeah. Is for me to live my most authentic life and let them see what can be in a fat body.
Dr. Carolyn: Yes.
Stephanie: But if I go out and I wanna attack people because they’re stigmatizing me, I don’t think I’m going to change the world that way.
Dr. Carolyn: Yeah. Well, I think you’re a breath of fresh air in that arena because so many, there’s so much anger coming from a lot of people, and I understand the anger. But I, I feel like as the movement matures, we need to, we do need to move beyond anger because it, it does separate even more, separate us even more.
Stephanie: I wanna say it’s my privilege and my financial privilege of being able to afford 10 years of all kinds of therapies and, and like processing my own trauma to be where I am and I recognize that this is not accessible to everyone.
Dr. Carolyn: Yes.
Stephanie: But that’s what’s speaking right now. is that part of me who’s done a lot of work because I was financially able to afford it.
Dr. Carolyn: Yeah. Well, let’s wrap up by just talking about the underlying current.
Stephanie: Yeah.
Dr. Carolyn: That I see in a lot of my clients with binge eating, emotionally eating and food addiction, which is even after all the years of work and so on, that desperation to still lose weight and you know, it’s so understandable and you know, I so identify my, I have it myself to some degree. But you know, after years of therapy or going through programs or feeling like they’ve accepted, there’s still that desperation to lose weight, to fit in, to not be stigmatized, etc. Do you see that as well?
Stephanie: I see the desperation to be happy, the desperation to feel better. What I see as named as a desperation to lose weight,
Dr. Carolyn: But it’s, it’s totally conjoined with, you know, like, I can’t be happy unless I was…
Stephanie: Yeah. A misunderstanding.
Dr. Carolyn: Yeah
Stephanie: The misunderstanding of what creates happiness. So what I see as absolutely right, it’s a desperation to lose weight. But as a coach who understand human, I’m seeing a desperation to feel better and which is human being 1 0 1. Right. Avoid pain, pleasure. And people think pleasure is the outcome of being in a thinner body.
Dr. Carolyn: Right. But how do you feel like over, when you look at 10 years of work, how do you feel that people are able to actually accept that happiness does not come from living in a thinner body. Do you feel like that’s better?
Stephanie: I see them. I see the world better probably because my world is filled with people who think it’s possible for them. But what I see different than, I think this is a fact, there’s less social of publicly calling out people who need to lose weight. If you even look at like, You know, the artists, newspaper and like you call them rag sheet paper in Canada, right?
Dr. Carolyn: Yeah.
Stephanie: You know, shaming people for their body is slowly disappearing.
Dr. Carolyn: Yes.
Stephanie: Like it’s becoming socially unacceptable. To me, that’s like a sign that 20 years from now will be in a different place because..
Dr. Carolyn: I hope so, but there’s also shame..
Stephanie: It wasn’t like that before.
Dr. Carolyn: You know, I, I look at what happened to Roxanne Gay, who admitted that she had you know, weight loss surgery and she was shamed for that.
Stephanie: Yeah, for sure.
Dr. Carolyn: Yeah, she was shamed of, I mean, so there’s shaming on both sides is what I’m saying.
Stephanie: Yeah.
Dr. Carolyn: And I think that’s, shame is an emotion that drives almost any negative behavior, so, well.
Stephanie: I think it’s how human think they can change other people by shaming them.
Dr. Carolyn: Cannot do that though. It just make…
Stephanie: It doesn’t work.
Dr. Carolyn: It doesn’t work.
Stephanie: Just so you know. It doesn’t work.
Dr. Carolyn: It doesn’t work. I tell parents that all the time, you know? They think they’re helping their kid by shaming them.
Stephanie: No, you’re creating trauma people. like I had like the first five years of therapy was my parenting from on the shame model, not the fault of my parent. That’s how they were taught parent by shaming their children.
Dr. Carolyn: Yeah.
Stephanie: I had to unwind five years in therapy to like come to peace with that. So just let you know you’re creating trauma more than anything else.
Dr. Carolyn: Good point. Well, it’s been great having you on the show. Do you wanna leave us with one message of hope here?
Stephanie: It’s beyond the food.
Dr. Carolyn: It’s beyond the food. Hope and happiness is beyond the food.
Stephanie: Yes.
Dr. Carolyn: Okay. How can people get ahold of you and learn more about your work?
Stephanie: So since we’re on a podcast, go over to your iTunes show bar or Google search bar. Wherever you’re listening from. The podcast and type in It’s Boing Beyond The Food. You’re gonna fall into my podcast. And then just go to my website, www.stephaniedodier.com
Dr. Carolyn: stephaniedodier.com
Stephanie: Yeah.
Dr. Carolyn: Awesome. And there will be information about Stephanie also in the show notes. So we’ll end here. Thanks for listening.
