00:00:00:00 - 00:00:22:07
Unknown
Hi. Welcome back to another episode of Tina's Arena. It's the holiday edition, and instead of uploading this episode on Tuesday, which is the day that I normally upload, I'm going to upload it a little bit early, so I'm coming into your ears today. Today, Sunday, December 24th, 2023. And I wanted to talk to you guys about how I approach the holidays.

00:00:22:07 - 00:01:04:00
Unknown
Now as a person that struggled with an eating disorder, struggled with bulimia, binge eating disorder, Orthorexia also over exercising. Yeah. Let's talk about the holidays and how I'm handling the holidays now. I am first and foremost still exercising. I can't see that being a thing that I'm giving up too soon. I woke up this morning naturally at about 8 a.m. and I had a hot yoga appointment booked at 1030, so that gave me lots of time to hit the gym before hot yoga.

00:01:04:00 - 00:01:22:10
Unknown
So that's exactly what it did. I didn't set an alarm. I didn't plan to go to the gym in the morning, but I had time, so we did it. I went to the gym and I did forward side and backward side, which is really good for the knees. It's like that, you know, in the turf area of the gym, there's a slide forward.

00:01:22:10 - 00:01:44:03
Unknown
Slide is when you push it going forward, obviously, and then backward slide is like you're dragging the sled and I'm moving backwards. So did a heavy weight in both of those and got a really good workout in. And then I did some beast dance deadlifts where your feet are staggered so that I'm working on one foot at a time.

00:01:44:05 - 00:02:08:19
Unknown
And that was basically my workout. That was all that I had time for because I spent a lot of time doing the slides. But I'm okay with that because I did it really heavy. I put £135 on the slide, so not only was I strengthening my legs, but I was also challenging my heart and doing a good cardio exercise workout and yeah, so that was all that I had time for at the gym in the morning.

00:02:08:21 - 00:02:31:21
Unknown
And then I went to hot yoga and it was a very difficult class. I at the end of the class, I remember feeling like I wanted to break down and cry in savasana. And had there been maybe one more pose, I would have sat out and it would have been in Child Pose the whole time, potentially crying my eyes out because I was done.

00:02:32:01 - 00:03:01:22
Unknown
I was done so. And then I came home and I had lunch and usually not usually, but in the past when I would when there were big celebratory meals like this, like big family gatherings, my family were eaters and my mom is the ultimate food pusher. I've had to, you know, enforce a lot of boundaries lately, and she's not so bad anymore.

00:03:01:22 - 00:03:36:05
Unknown
But my mom was the ultimate food pusher and me being her daughter, obviously, that resulted in lots of food trauma for me. So in the past, as a person who's struggled with food and over eating, what I would do is I would try to starve myself the entire day and then go to dinner, starving so that I could eat a big meal at dinner and not feel like I was overeating the whole day and not feeling like I was eating too many calories.

00:03:36:07 - 00:04:04:21
Unknown
So, yeah, surprise, surprise, that backfired for me. I always felt like I was so starved that when I ate it never really felt like I could get full. So I would continue to eat. And honestly, I think because I was starved, my brain would just be fixated on food more, you know, probably in conjunction with the eating disorder that I had.

00:04:04:23 - 00:04:31:05
Unknown
But I was just fixated on food the entire time, the entire party, the entire night, the entire day. And I could not stop eating once I started eating. And then as a disordered eater, as soon as I felt too full, it would trigger lots of shame in me, lots of guilt, like I am a terrible person. How could I overeat?

00:04:31:07 - 00:04:55:13
Unknown
I am a bad person. I eat too much. I did it again. It ruined my diet. I ruined mice myself. And that was like the kind of cycle that I had when I was in that time frame. And, you know, it works for some people to not eat the entire day and then have a big meal at dinner.

00:04:55:15 - 00:05:15:11
Unknown
It does work for a lot of people. And I believe that those people have a healthy relationship with food. They don't struggle with the same feelings, they don't struggle with the guilt and the toxic thoughts. So if that works for you, then like, absolutely, that's amazing. I don't have anything against that. If that works for you, then like you'll keep doing it.

00:05:15:11 - 00:05:38:02
Unknown
Like, you know what's best for you. It's all good. But for me and anyone like me, it was really, really, really bad actually. And so I had to just learn to do the opposite. I don't starve myself. I had a protein shake before I went to the gym and then I had a protein shake when I came back.

00:05:38:04 - 00:06:12:15
Unknown
And then I had lunch and now it's almost time for dinner and I am not starving. I'm not hungry. Well, actually, I'm a little bit hungry. I could eat now, but the whole point is that I'm not starving and I did not starve myself the entire day. I had a really high protein intake today and that is setting myself up for success later because for me, when I am starving, I make poor food choices because I just like I want to eat the first thing that's available.

00:06:12:17 - 00:06:37:00
Unknown
And usually it also means that I continue eating even after I'm full just because I have been in such a restrictive mindset all day that when I do start eating, I'm just letting it all go right? So that kind of mindset is like all or nothing extremes, which again works for some people, but it didn't work for me.

00:06:37:00 - 00:06:55:01
Unknown
And I just want to explain what happened. So like starving all day that you go from zero and then eating, you go from 100 and the next day it's another family gathering. I'm starving all day I'm going to zero and then another dinner and then I'm going 100 and I'm just going back and forth and back and forth, never finding a happy medium.

00:06:55:06 - 00:07:27:20
Unknown
I'm always starving and hating my life because I'm starving. Or then I'm too full and I'm hating my life and not enjoying the presence of my family and friends because I'm too full. And now I can only think about how full I am. So that was what didn't work for me. And now, now that I just eat regularly throughout the day, I maintain an even keel of hunger and it just feels better.

00:07:27:20 - 00:08:00:03
Unknown
It's so much more manageable. I always feel like I'm in control of my hunger. I, I can eat smaller meals because I don't feel like I'm starving. So that's just what has worked for me. Like when you come from a binge eating past, it feels really uncomfortable to have a large meal, a meal that is too large because it triggers those feelings of binge eating because, like, that's how it feels.

00:08:00:05 - 00:08:24:17
Unknown
So I have to mitigate that now and I have to know that I don't want to feel super full anymore. I'm not going to eat until my stomach is so extended that I can't sit up straight or stand straight. That's not beneficial for me. My body, my mindset, my emotional state. It's not working for me at all anymore.

00:08:24:17 - 00:08:44:17
Unknown
And I know this, and I've done it so many times that I've kind of reinforced the idea in my head that this is not good and I don't want to feel that way. And the association of pain that I have made in my head with feeling overextended is so bad that I just don't want to go there anymore.

00:08:44:17 - 00:09:20:03
Unknown
So now I'm able to stop before I get to the overextended and in pain part most of the time. Most of the time. So yeah, that's how I'm approaching the holidays. Because like I said, my family, we love to eat. We bond around the dinner table. That's all that we do. And I used to struggle with eating so much that, like I would dread family parties and my family is so big that we would have birthday parties every single month.

00:09:20:05 - 00:09:46:21
Unknown
And it was just a constant battle between me and my brain and the food that was in front of me. And that just doesn't feel good. And I just don't want to be in that mind state anymore. So I really feel that, you know, you kind of have to get sick of how you are. You have to get so fed up with yourself that you're willing to do something different.

00:09:47:02 - 00:10:08:07
Unknown
I was so fed up with being miserable. I was so fed up with like doing this to myself because I knew that this was something that I was doing to myself. Nobody made me eat. I mean, my mom definitely encouraged me to eat, but nobody was stuffing food into my face except for me. So that is a 100% controllable behavior.

00:10:08:07 - 00:10:36:17
Unknown
I can 100% control myself putting food in my face. So it was entirely up to me to change my habits. And at the end of the day, that's what it came down to. Emotional eating and binge eating became a habit and it started to become a habit in my mind because I would feel uncomfortable, maybe situationally, maybe something was happening that I was uncomfortable with, and I would turn to food to make myself feel better.

00:10:36:22 - 00:11:05:15
Unknown
And it would work initially. Like initially, the food would cure the pain, although temporarily. And so I would keep eating. And that's how the binge eating kind of began, because I was medicating myself with food. And then eventually, like and then eventually it just doesn't work anymore because one, the food gets boring. And number two, I'm gaining too much weight and I'm unhappy with the way that I look and the way that I feel.

00:11:05:17 - 00:11:20:15
Unknown
And I'm also I like I know that, you know, binge eating and emotional eating is not going to be good for me long term. So it's also a strain on me because mentally, because I know, like this isn't behavior that I can sustain long term.

00:11:20:15 - 00:11:24:15
Unknown
because I knew that I was literally killing myself with the behavior that I was doing.

00:11:24:15 - 00:11:47:05
Unknown
Bulimia and I knew that it just kind of clicked in my head one day, and I kind of knew that if I continued down this road that I would most certainly be dying way sooner than I should be. And I just kind of realized that, you know what, I'm not I'm not ready to go down that path. I don't want to die.

00:11:47:07 - 00:12:09:00
Unknown
And that was kind of the instant that changed it all for me. And I started to heal. And of course, it wasn't a linear journey, but I had I just had to realize that, like, I was so fed up with my own bullshit that I could not allow myself to continue doing this. I needed to figure something else out.

00:12:09:02 - 00:12:36:21
Unknown
And so I started reading a whole bunch of books, started educating myself, started taking a whole bunch of courses, tried to do therapy although therapy, I never really found a therapist that stuck with me back then or that like I had rapport with. But that became my healing journey. I don't know if I meant to go into all of that right now, but that is basically my story about emotional eating and binge eating and bulimia and like all of that stuff.

00:12:36:23 - 00:13:13:10
Unknown
But I am coming to you from the other side and I hope that, you know, these quick little conversations give you a lot of feedback, give you some ideas about ways that you can use this information for yourself. That's something that you struggle with. And of course, I'm here for your support as well. I have lived through this for so long and you know, I still have days where I emotional eat, but I'm just much more in control of myself at all times.

00:13:13:11 - 00:13:44:23
Unknown
I don't want anyone to feel like, you know, I am perfect in any way because I do not believe that I am at all. So this is lived experience and I think that's what makes it so powerful for me that I keep talking about it because I really, really, really would love to help people on their journey or even prevent people from going down the same path that I did.

00:13:44:23 - 00:14:13:03
Unknown
So that's that's why I talk about this. Yeah. So that's how I handle the holidays is I don't let myself starve. I don't let myself go to any extremes. I listen to my body. I actually it's it's Sunday, the 24th. Today my family is coming over for actually some of my family is already over for our potluck. And I took a nap because I just needed some extra energy.

00:14:13:04 - 00:14:30:21
Unknown
So, yeah, listen to yourself, respect your boundaries. You know what's best for you. And if you need to take some time away, take some time away, that it's. It's all good. It's all good. So, yes, it's Christmas Eve if you celebrate Christmas. Happy holidays.

00:14:30:21 - 00:14:35:15
Unknown
I mean, Merry Christmas and happy holidays to everyone else that doesn't celebrate Christmas.

00:14:35:15 - 00:14:44:11
Unknown
I think that's all that I really wanted to say today. I just wish you the best. We'll see you next week.