Food Psych #107: From Disordered Eating to Health at Every Size with Heidi Schauster
Fellow Health at Every Size dietitian Heidi Schauster shares how she overcame restriction and bingeing, why perfectionism fuels the fire of disordered eating, how intuitive eating leads to a peaceful relationship with food, what health professionals need to know about Health at Every Size, how to overcome self-judgment and speak more kindly to yourself, why the thin ideal is so damaging to people's health, and lots more!
Heidi Schauster, MS, RD, LDN is a nutrition therapist and registered dietitian with 20+ years of experience in the field of disordered eating. She is a nutrition counselor, writer, consultant, and clinical supervisor of other registered dietitians, based in the Greater Boston area. Heidi also publishes a seasonal blog called A Nourishing Word. Heidi feels called to assist clients and readers in improving their relationships with food and their bodies. Heidi also has a personal recovery history: she struggled with bulimia, food restriction, and binge-eating in her late teens and early twenties. Now that she is 45 and has been recovered for over two decades, she loves being in her body and in her life. Heidi is passionate about helping others get past obsessions with food, self-criticism, and negative body image. She uses Intuitive Eating principles, a Health at Every Size paradigm, Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT), and mindfulness practices in her work. Heidi is also a life-long dancer, and dance has played a role in both her eating disorder history and her healing. Heidi encourages her clients, when they are ready, to discover conscious, mindful movement -- in order to fully embrace the joy of being connected to a well-nourished, well-cared for body and soul. Find her online at anourishingword.com.
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We Discuss:
Heidi’s relationship with food growing up, and how it changed along with her relationship to ballet and dance
Thin privilege
Body changes that came along with puberty
Binge eating disorder, restriction, and bulimia
The value of therapy in eating disorder recovery
Heidi’s studies in nutrition and psychology
Intuitive movement
Self-compassion vs self-judgment
Intuitive eating
Alternative coping mechanisms vs. emotional eating
Reacting to self-criticism
Raising daughters in diet culture
Heidi’s introduction to Health at Every Size and the body-positive movement
Body acceptance
Anti-diet activism
The HAES community in Boston, MA
Treatment of disordered eating from a HAES perspective
Fatphobia in the medical community
Disclosing our personal food peace and recovery stories while maintaining our own boundaries
Never-ending growth and lifelong learning
Resources Mentioned
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