Holistic Health Radio

In today’s episode Lucy and I discuss:

• What is low energy availability and how it causes a missing period
• How to reverse low energy availability for period recovery
• The scientific basis of 2500 calories for period recovery
• Why you might need more or less than 2500 calories to recover your period
• How what you eat is just as important as when you eat for period recovery
• The optimal meal and snack timing for period recovery
• The main foods and macronutrients you should be focusing on for period recovery
• The problem of high volume foods in period recovery
• Why you need to face your food fears when working on period recovery
• How to stop calorie counting and start listening to your hunger

❤️ Join my newsletter list for weekly motivation and inspiration and you'll also receive a FREE copy of my eBook "31 Ways to Boost Your Body Image"

❤️ Ready to get your period back? Join the next round of Healing Hypothalamic Amenorrhea! This 8-week, hybrid group and 1:1 coaching program is designed to help you recover your period while improving your relationship with food, exercise and your body. Find out details and sign up here: https://sarahlizking.com/healing-ha/

❤️ Looking for a supportive recovery community? For all the support, resources and strategies you need on your recovery journey, join us in Recovery Club today!

❤️ Work with me and my team to improve your relationship with food and exercise by heading to www.sarahlizking.com and filling out the contact form.

❤️ If you enjoyed this episode please leave a 5⭐️ review and share a screenshot on Instagram by tagging myself @sarahlizking and I'll be sure to reshare.

Many eating disorder behaviors are emotional avoidance strategies.

For example, if you feel something uncomfortable - instead of managing this emotion with a HELPFUL emotional regulation strategy the emotion is avoided or “numbed” with disordered eating or exercise behaviours.

So When individuals go into recovery they need to step away from these behvaiours that have long been used as avoidance strategies. They need to be exchanged for healthier eating and exercise behaviours. But how do you go about doing this?

That's the exact question we answer in this week's episode of Holistic Health Radio. By the end of this episode you'll:

• Know the signs to look out for which show you're using disordered behaviours to avoid negative emotions
• Understand the relationship you have with your emotions
• Know how to identify what emotion you're feeling
• Go beyond the thought of "feeling fat" and actually pinpoint the emotion you're experiencing
• Understand physical manifestations of emotions and tune into the sensations that appear in your body
• Be able to learn what situations or thoughts trigger certain emotions
• Have the skills to effectively sit with your feelings without turning to disordered behaviours
• Be capable of naming and acknowledging your emotions instead of running away from them
• Know how to sit with emotions and be curious about them
• Be able to make recovery aligned choices even in the face of difficult emotions

❤️ Join my newsletter list for weekly motivation and inspiration and you'll also receive a FREE copy of my eBook "31 Ways to Boost Your Body Image"

❤️ Ready to get your period back? Join the next round of Healing Hypothalamic Amenorrhea! This 8-week, hybrid group and 1:1 coaching program is designed to help you recover your period while improving your relationship with food, exercise and your body. Find out details and sign up here: https://sarahlizking.com/healing-ha/

❤️ Looking for a supportive recovery community? For all the support, resources and strategies you need on your recovery journey, join us in Recovery Club today!

❤️ Work with me and my team to improve your relationship with food and exercise by heading to www.sarahlizking.com and filling out the contact form.

❤️ If you enjoyed this episode please leave a 5⭐️ review and share a screenshot on Instagram by tagging myself @sarahlizking and I'll be sure to reshare.

We are familiar with common behaviours seen in the presence of an eating disorder. These are outlined in the DSM-5 diagnostic criteria for eating disorders. Whilst of course these differ across the eating disorder diagnoses some include:

• A preoccupation with weight and shape, diet and exercise
• Development of rigid rules around food
• Intense fear of gaining weight, or persistent behaviour that interferes with weight gain

These are just a few of the symptoms and behaviours of eating disorders that are easily recognisable in individuals with disordered eating.

However, there are a number of Eating Disorder behaviours that don’t get quite as much recognition. These tend to be less common, and you would not need to display these behaviours to receive an ED or disordered eating diagnosis, but they are prevalent enough to deserve an exploration on the podcast.

In this episode we explore:

• Chew and spit behaviour - its prevalence, complications and how to stop doing it
• Adding lots of condiments to food - how to identify if you're struggling with this, why it's problematic and ways to add more variety into your diet and stop over reliance on one food item
• Hyperactivity - what this looks like in real life and why it happens plus how to allow yourself to rest and recover
• Obsession with food photos, videos and recipes - why this happens during restriction and how it can fuel your disordered eating
• Preparing food for others but not yourself - why you're not allowing yourself to enjoy these meals or dishes and how to give yourself full permission to eat
• Eating with specific plates, bowls or utensils - a sneaky behaviour that's more damaging than you think
• Eating at a very slow pace or cutting food up into certain size pieces - why you seek this control and how to let go of this habit
• Being over informed about nutrition - how applying certain nutrition recommendations can actually be harmful to your recovery
• Eating the same foods or meals every day - understanding your fears around trying new foods and how to calmly integrate more variety into. your diet

❤️ Join my newsletter list for weekly motivation and inspiration and you'll also receive a FREE copy of my eBook "31 Ways to Boost Your Body Image"

❤️ Ready to get your period back? Join the next round of Healing Hypothalamic Amenorrhea! This 8-week, hybrid group and 1:1 coaching program is designed to help you recover your period while improving your relationship with food, exercise and your body. Find out details and sign up here: https://sarahlizking.com/healing-ha/

❤️ Looking for a supportive recovery community? For all the support, resources and strategies you need on your recovery journey, join us in Recovery Club today!

❤️ Work with me and my team to improve your relationship with food and exercise by heading to www.sarahlizking.com and filling out the contact form.

❤️ If you enjoyed this episode please leave a 5⭐️ review and share a screenshot on Instagram by tagging myself @sarahlizking and I'll be sure to reshare.

Today I'm joined exercise physiologist, Courtney Polock who runs an online exercise physiology clinic specialising in women's health and pelvic floor dysfunction.

Many people assume you only need to think about your pelvic floor health when pregnant, but that simply isn't true. Hormones and eating disorders can have a huge impact on pelvic floor health and function, which is why I'm so excited to talk to Courtenay today.

In this episode Courtenay and I discuss:

• What the pelvic floor is and what it does
• Common signs and symptoms of pelvic floor dysfunction
• Why Kegel exercises simply aren't enough for a strong pelvic floor
• The impact of hormonal fluctuations and low energy availability on pelvic floor strength
• Factors that increase your risk for pelvic floor dysfunction
• How eating disorders can weaken the pelvic floor
• What breathing techniques are best to optimise pelvic floor activation (and which breathing techniques to avoid)
• How to prime your pelvic floor so you stay strong and continent during your workouts

You can follow Courtenay online at @her.exercise.physiology or check out her website to view her services and book a consultation.

❤️ Join my newsletter list for weekly motivation and inspiration and you'll also receive a FREE copy of my eBook "31 Ways to Boost Your Body Image"

❤️ Ready to get your period back? Join the next round of Healing Hypothalamic Amenorrhea! This 8-week, hybrid group and 1:1 coaching program is designed to help you recover your period while improving your relationship with food, exercise and your body. Find out details and sign up here: https://sarahlizking.com/healing-ha/

❤️ Looking for a supportive recovery community? For all the support, resources and strategies you need on your recovery journey, join us in Recovery Club today!

❤️ Work with me and my team to improve your relationship with food and exercise by heading to www.sarahlizking.com and filling out the contact form.

❤️ If you enjoyed this episode please leave a 5⭐️ review and share a screenshot on Instagram by tagging myself @sarahlizking and I'll be sure to reshare.

Over the last decade the stigma that once existed around mental illness has decreased significantly. This is largely due to increased awareness of the prevalence of mental illness, media campaigns and prominent public figures sharing their experience with various mental health disorders.

However, even as people find understanding and support for their illness, they are also subject to a host of unhelpful and stigmatizing attitudes about medication. These include:

• the implication that they’re just not trying hard enough to overcome their condition,
• the recommendation that all they need is a certain diet, or exercise, or meditation,
• the assumption that the cure for their condition is as simple as taking a pill.

In the context of HA and ED recovery it is important to remember that eating disorders are often comorbid with other mental health conditions such as:

• Anxiety disorders (Generalised anxiety disorder, social anxiety disorder etc etc)
• Depression
• Obsessive Compulsive Disorder
• PTSD
• Substance use disorders

Therefore this topic is very relevant to our audience and clientele - which is why we wanted to address it!

In this episode we discuss:

• Why is there still a stigma around the use of medication?
• The influence of pop-culture jokes on medication use and misrepresentation in films and TV
• How the lack of cultural conversation can keep the stigma of medication alive
• The association between taking medication and being "labelled"
• Misinformation about alternative or 'natural' approaches
• 3 main reasons why medication may be important for you during HA or ED recovery.

❤️ Join my newsletter list for weekly motivation and inspiration and you'll also receive a FREE copy of my eBook "31 Ways to Boost Your Body Image"

❤️ Ready to get your period back? Join the next round of Healing Hypothalamic Amenorrhea! This 8-week, hybrid group and 1:1 coaching program is designed to help you recover your period while improving your relationship with food, exercise and your body. Find out details and sign up here: https://sarahlizking.com/healing-ha/

❤️ Looking for a supportive recovery community? For all the support, resources and strategies you need on your recovery journey, join us in Recovery Club today!

❤️ Work with me and my team to improve your relationship with food and exercise by heading to www.sarahlizking.com and filling out the contact form.

❤️ If you enjoyed this episode please leave a 5⭐️ review and share a screenshot on Instagram by tagging myself @sarahlizking and I'll be sure to reshare.