Body image coach Rachel Cole shares why we lose touch with our bodies in times of distress, how to start coming back into embodiment, why the 2016 election has caused so much pain for people struggling with food and body issues, how she recovered from eating disorders and embraced body positivity, why feminism and social justice are so integral to making peace with food and your body, and lots more!

“True body positivity is a political movement.” [Click to Tweet]

Rachel Cole is a certified life coach, celebrated teacher, and women’s empowerment expert. She has spent ten years guiding women to identify, understand and feed their truest hungers – at and away from the table. As an eating disorder survivor herself, Rachel speaks with great wisdom, sensitivity, and authority about what it takes to live as a well-fed woman in the modern world. She has traveled across the United States and internationally speaking and teaching to sold-out gatherings of women on how they too can find ease and fulfillment in their lives simply by honoring their own hungers. Rachel holds a Masters Degree in Holistic Health Education and is a Certified Professional Co-Active Coach. Find her online at RachelWCole.com, and read her full blog post, "Stay."

We Discuss:

• The importance of body politics in the body image discussion, including some of the systemic issues that feed into our relationships to our bodies

• The value in staying present in our bodies when we are faced with difficult feelings, including eating disorder thoughts

• The struggles many of us face with embodiment, including the reasons we leave our bodies in times of distress and how living in the body of a woman can be particularly difficult

• How objectification takes agency away from those of us trying to experience embodiment

• Ways in which we can engage in purposeful embodiment in a curious, non-judgmental way

• The importance of balancing self-care with intentional engagement

• How confusing it can be as a person in a helping profession during this turbulent cultural period, and the difficulty of watching clients engage with their own oppression

• Rachel’s relationship with food and her body growing up, including her eating disorder history and how important getting angry at the systemic issues that feed into eating disorder development was in finding her eating disorder recovery

• How a parent’s relationship with food and their bodies can impact their children's body image and relationship with food

• The double-edged sword of exposing diet culture and diving into the body-positive world, including the pro of deprogramming our minds from the diet mindset, but the con of seeing fat shaming, negative body talk, and disordered eating everywhere we go

• How important it is to remember that the honeymoon phase of intuitive eating eventually ends, and that getting back in touch with our hunger and fullness cues is a long, difficult, but integral part of the eating disorder recovery process

• The ways in which letting go of weight management is such a big step towards intuitive eating and true eating disorder recovery

• Rachel’s experience in graduate school, including her transition into orthorexia

• How seemingly innocuous comments from peers can feed into our perception of ourselves as “healthy” eaters, and can continue to push us towards disordered eating

• The difficulty of navigating our own relationships with food in relation to other people's behaviors around food, and dealing with the silent judgment when everyone around you is engaging in a restrictive lifestyle

• Rachel’s journey to her role as life coach focusing on HAES, intuitive eating, and eating disorder recovery

• The deep need in the nutrition community for more HAES voices

"If you can mess it up, it's a diet." [Click to Tweet]

Resources Mentioned

• Feed Your Life

• The Feast program