It's Not About Food Podcast with Laurelee Roark Laurelee Roark

Today we are discussing the idea the eating disorder is a cry from our deepest soul. Something is trying desperately to get our attention. And it is our own self. We are spiritual beings trying to live in a body. So at the heart of every eating disorder is the desire to awaken, embrace our whole selves and experience our spiritual truth. Creativity, passion and our soul's desire will lead us to our true selves.
Carol Normandi, MFT, www.amritaedt.com, FB- Amrita Eating Disorder Treatment

Trust is the knowing that our bodies are living intelligences, giving us immediate feedback about what does and doesn’t work for us. When we stop viewing our bodies as something we need to control and manipulate, we can begin seeing them as very wise teachers. When we start to trust our bodies, we can listen and understand what they need.
About Wendy Welsher
Wendy is a fat-positive personal trainer who specializes in functional strength and conditioning. She teaches the foundations of functional movement, weightlifting, and power training, including safe practices and recovery methods, which my clients use in their everyday lives to improve their activities of daily living greatly. She lives with ADHD, depressive disorder, and anxiety while in recovery from an eating disorder. She has experienced fatphobia and weight bias first-hand and understands how traumatic this is in a movement space.  She can empathize with how it can affect one’s self-esteem, confidence, and body trust. This is why Wendy created My Joyous Adaptive Momentous Movement and Joyful Inclusive Movement. She is creating movement spaces that are truly authentic, accessible, inclusive, safe, and effective. It’s important to me to connect with her community through movement to show them how much fun it can be moving their body!
Website: https://www.myjamm.rocks/


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Recovery from an Eating Disorder is not a Linear Process.
This podcast is looking at true recovery. It requires many layers of learning that unfold uniquely, spontaneously and independently. As we go around the spiral of recovery we often hit a stressor, which takes us back to our behavior. But we learn how to work ourselves out of it and get back to recovery with more self-knowledge. Stress will always happen but we can have faith we will work through it.
Margaret Burton

Diet thoughts are the kind of thoughts we’re having when we think we “should” only eat certain kinds or quantities of foods, count calories or fat grams, or other eating rules that are restrictive and based on losing weight. These thoughts are learned from our diet culture. Dieting is an obsession that allows us to focus on something very tangible and concrete, giving us the feeling that we are in control. When we understand that diet thoughts can sometimes be a response to underlying feelings we can begin to use diet thoughts as a red flag to explore these feelings.

Body Wisdom is the inherent wisdom we each hold within our own bodies that tells us what we need physically, emotionally and spiritually. When we listen to the wisdom of our bodies, we intuitively know how to feed ourselves, satisfy our needs and accept our natural bodies. 

With over 25 years of experience, Chevese Turner is an internationally recognized eating disorders, weight discrimination and social justice activist who founded the Binge Eating Disorder Association (BEDA) in 2008. Turner carries these messages to audiences around the US and abroad in schools, healthcare settings, trade organizations, associations, professional conferences, corporations, and governmental agencies. Turner is the co-author of the recently published book: Binge Eating Disorder: The Journey to Recovery & Beyond and contributes regularly to podcasts and the media. Turner attended Temple University in Philadelphia where she received a BA in Political Science. Her professional background includes public policy and government relations, non-profit management, programming, strategy and communications. Instagram:@turnunder Facebook:@bedadvocate


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Observation is the ability to observe and question our behaviors. When we can do this with a sense of detachment, curiosity, and no judgment, like a scientist, we can then be safe enough to see our true behaviors. Only by seeing ourselves as clearly and honestly as possible, can we start to understand our behaviors.