Food Psych #164: How to Make Peace with Your Belly with Rachel Cole

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Body-acceptance coach Rachel Cole returns to discuss why pathologizing our bellies is so harmful, how diet culture infiltrates the world of pregnancy and postpartum, how our bellies protect us during menopause, how Rachel has navigated nutrition and her relationship with food while being pregnant, and so much more! Plus, Christy answers a listener question about whether it’s possible to be a vegan intuitive eater.

Rachel Cole is a certified life coach, celebrated teacher, and women’s empowerment expert. She has spent 15 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. Find her online at RachelWCole.com.

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We Discuss:

  • What Rachel has been up to since her first guest appearance on Food Psych, including her new venture into podcasting

  • Our relationship with our bellies, and how that relationship can change if we experience pregnancy

  • The Wellness Diet, and why pathologizing our bellies harms us

  • Menopause, weight gain, and the need for support for individuals in this stage of life

  • How Rachel protected herself from diet culture during her pregnancy, including the complex issue of being weighed during pregnancy

  • Making integrative decisions, including how Rachel has navigated nutrition and her relationship with food while being pregnant

  • Holistic self-care, including the importance of adjusting to circumstances and embracing pleasure

  • Acknowledging that we can’t do everything and learning how to listen to your inner wisdom to guide you towards the actionable items that matter the most

  • The Pregnancy Industrial complex and the ways in which it mirrors diet culture

  • How diet culture infiltrates the pregnancy community and online pregnancy hubs

  • The healing we can find in accessing real life stories around recovery or pregnancy

  • The parallels between eating disorder recovery and grappling with body changes during pregnancy

  • Shifting our thinking around body changes from something that is shameful to something that is disorienting instead

  • The exhaustion of conformity and how we can cast aside the need to conform

  • How the fight against our bodies is a way that those in power attempt to distract us from the injustice going on around us

  • The power of adolescent outrage in disrupting the status quo and the role of anger in recovery

 

Resources Mentioned

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Listener Question of the Week

How can we make food choices, such as veganism, while recovering from disordered eating? Can we be a vegan and eat intuitively? How do we make ethical food choices while also putting ourselves first? Can we incorporate certain styles of eating into our lives without it becoming disordered?

 
Christy HarrisonThe Wellness Diet, menopause, weight gain, diet culture, pregnancy, veganism, intuitive eating, disordered eating, eating disorders, eating disorder recovery, recovery, body image, body changes, self-care, anger, pleasure, S518