Episode 11 - Nurturing a recovery mindset with Megsyrecovery

04/20/21 • 73 min

TW: talk of anorexia and pregnancy/infant loss
In this episode, Nicola and Florence have a conversation with Meg, former anorexia patient and owner of the Megsyrecovery Youtube account. Together they talked about Meg's anorexia treatment as a teen in the UK, about her accidental relapse as a young adult and finally getting access to CBT-E. Meg evoked the hard steps to take in recovery to eat, even though it felt really scary, and how she managed to rewire her brain along the way, zooming out to invest in the life she truly wanted to live.
Meg also explains some of the tips and tricks she used in recovery, to help shift her focus, deal with the guilt of eating more, accept her body and weight gain, and stay on track with her life goals.
You can find Meg's youtube channel here.

The moment of lift - Melinda Gates
To find support in your HA recovery:
Get the "No Period. Now What?" book at noperiod.info/book.
To make an appointment with Dr Rinaldi and get individual support to get your period back or improve your fertility, please go to noperiod.info/appointments
To make an appointment with Florence Gillet and get help with the body and mind changes happening in recovery please visit www.beyondbodyimage.com
You can find us on social media
No Period, Now What? on Instagram
No Period, Now What? Recovery Support Group
Beyond Body Image on Facebook
Beyond Body Image on Instagram
Amenorrhee_fr (HA recovery 100% in French) on Instagram
Email us via [email protected]
If you enjoyed this podcast and found it helpful, please drop us a rating and a review to help more people fin

To find support in your HA recovery:
Get the "No Period. Now What?" book at noperiod.info/book.
Get the French version "Je n'ai plus mes regles" book at noperiod.info/livre.
Get the German version "Keine periode - was jetzt?" at noperiod.info/buch.
To join our support groups, please visit noperiod.info/support
for English, noperiod.info/communaute for French, and noperiod.info/community for German.
To make an appointment with Dr Sykes and get individual support to get your period back or improve your fertility, please go to noperiod.info/appointments
To make an appointment with Florence Gillet and get help with the body and mind changes happening in recovery please visit www.beyondbodyimage.com
You can find us on social media:
Instagram:
@noperiodnowwhat in English
@jenaiplusmesregles_livre in French
@keineperiodewasjetzt in German
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Previous Episode

Episode 10 - Gut health in HA recovery with RD Erin Kenney

In this episode, Nicola and Florence interview Erin Kenney, a former HA patient who is also a Registered Dietitian, specializing in gut health and sports nutrition.
Erin starts by explaining why she became a RD and what the difference is between RDs and nutritionists (who may have very little training). She explains how her recovery informed her work, and why she doesn't believe that elimination diets should be the first point of call when people complain of digestive issues.
Erin also explained the immediate effect of dieting on one's microbiome's diversity and health. Short term, dieting can cause slow motility: constipation and bloating, as well as acid reflux, low appetite, gut dysbiosis. Within 24 hours, dieting can affect the composition of gut bacteria. Long term (1 to 2 months), dieting can cause atrophy of the GI muscles. When people are under fueling, that muscle needs energy to be repaired. When people don’t have robust, healthy muscles in their GI tract, they can experience constipation, gastroparesis (slow movement in GI tract), food sensitivities.

Find more research, shared by Erin, backing this up:
- Weight gain in anorexia nervosa does not ameliorate the faecal microbiota, branched chain fatty acid profiles and gastrointestinal complaints
- The Intestinal Microbiota in Acute Anorexia Nervosa and During Renourishment: Relationship to Depression, Anxiety, and Eating Disorder Psychopathology
- Gut microbiota and body composition in anorexia nervosa inpatients in comparison to athletes, overweight, obese, and normal weight controls
- Gut Dysbiosis in Patients with Anorexia Nervosa
Erin also helps us understand how to distinguish real food intolerances from sensitivities caused by chronic under fueling, as well as how to test and treat SIBO without restrictive dieting behaviors.

Erin shares simple advice to enhance digestion while being all in, including the fact that relaxation techniques like yoga and meditation or therapy, which have be proven to be even more e

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Episode 12 - Virgie Tovar on diet culture and fatphobia

In this episode, Nicola and Florence receive American award-winning author and leading expert on weight-based discrimination and body image, Virgie Tovar.
Virgie evokes her memories of growing up in a larger body, and internalizing toxic cultural messages about her ultimate responsibility to become thin. In her early twenties, she was introduced to fat activism while studying for her Master's degree in Sexuality Studies.

Together, Virgie, Nicola, and Florence explore the 3 levels of fatphobia and how fatphobia leads to serious discrimination in many areas including wages and medical care, resulting in higher weight people avoiding going to the doctor. Fatphobia also affects fashion, with the industry doing its best to keep higher weight people outside of stores, although about 70% of the population is actually plus size. Fat discrimination is in fact considered legal in most US states. Although we know from research that a higher weight person is less than 1% likely to ever become an average size person according to BMI. And that scientifically, dieting is correlated with depression, anxiety and an increased likelihood of developing an eating disorder. Not with weight loss.

Virgie unpacks the term "diet culture" for Florence and Nicola and explains it is not coincidence that it was was born at the same time as capitalism, puritanism, and colonialism.
Virgie also evokes internalized gender inferiority in women and its links to self-objectification. with the works of John Berger and Phyllis Chessler. She reminds us that everything we can turn to for pleasure in our society is heavily regulated and shamed, including hunger. She mentions a study on subjective hunger affecting long term decisions. And the podcast ends with simple ways anyone can fight fatphobia.

You can find Virgie Tovar through her website, Instagram account or