Ep 29 Reflections of a Fat Girl with Ilene Leshinsky

Hey Friend!!

Welcome back to the show!  In this episode I am joined by Ilene Leshinsky, a fellow psychotherapist in the non-diet space.

Ilene is the best-selling author of Reflections of a Fat Girl and the founder of Find Body Freedom (formerly BodySense), a program for women who want to change their relationship with their bodies. For twenty-eight years, Ilene has practiced as a psychotherapist and body image specialist in New York, Massachusetts and other areas online throughout the United States. Now, she works with women of all ages who want to love their bodies and eat with joy through innate body wisdom.

Ilene and I chatted about her experience with emotional eating, her history with diets, and how she came to body awareness. 

Mentioned On the Show

Ilene's Book:  Reflections of a Fat Girl on Amazon

Find Ilene on:

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Transcript

Sabrina  0:01  
Welcome back friends, I'm super excited for today's episode, I have Eileen Leszczynski. With me today, who is also a fellow psychotherapist in this non diet space, we're really excited that we got connected and are going to bring this episode to you. So I leaned you want to say hello to the listeners.

Ilene  0:21  
Hello, listeners, I'm so happy to be here, Sabrina. I love talking to like minded women.

Sabrina  0:30  
And I don't know about for you, but this space of like minded women in that non diet sort of body acceptance, innate body wisdom space is very few and far between.

Ilene  0:44  
I agree with you, it's very far a few and far between. And to be very honest with you, I, I really feel that a lot of people give lip service to it. But when push comes to shove, they want their bodies to look a certain way. And so that kind of sort of undermines the message.

Sabrina  1:07  
Exactly. And I think that's why it's gotten a little, it's had a little bit of slow to get going with the traction of the whole movement of it's, it's not necessarily what what we're being preached on social media all the time.

Ilene  1:23  
Oh my god. So different? Yes.

Sabrina  1:27  
Well, before we jumped down that rabbit hole, oh, let's go back just a little bit. And if you wouldn't mind sharing, as much as you're comfortable with your personal and professional experiences with emotional eating.

Ilene  1:40  
Okay, so I've been an emotional eater. I was an emotional eater, since I think my first recollection of it is five years old. Um, I see pictures of myself when I was three. And I was this cute little happy child. And I see pictures of myself at five. And I am pretty markedly overweight, and not looking so happy in pictures. And so I I know it was when I have identified it as such, then of course not, I was five years old. But the point being that I was sneaking in, and anytime someone is sneaky eating, one can, you know, put that under the umbrella of emotional eating. So I was emotional, emotionally eating as a child, and snake eating all the way through high school when I was you know, and when I finally left home and went to college, there was no need to do it anymore. But lo and behold, there was no need to do it anymore. So my whole not approach to food because that was not the case. But my eating behaviors changed. Incredibly when I went off to school and away from the chaos and the crises that were going on in my house. And, you know now and particularly because I'm a psychotherapist Doc, I connect the dots and see that there was a very big connection between the energy that I was taking in in my house, and my use of food as medicine, medication on anti anxiety medication. And so, up until the time I was in my mid 30s I had a very antagonistic relationship with food. And it as I got older and start to started to recognize, hey, what am I doing here? I was able to label Oh, okay. When you're okay, you and I wasn't okay. But I was highly restricting my food. Looking back now, I had anorexic type of eating behaviors. I did not have anorexia. And when I was in stress and turmoil, I would swing to the opposite end of the eating continuum, and compulsively overeat, binge eat. And both were responses to having emotions, and an emotional attachment to food. But for Wow, 20 years, in my late adolescence into my early adulthood, I swung back and forth on that continuum, and I was anxious and depressed and lost. And I was not a happy human being. And so how long do we want the story to go on Sabrina, because one of the things that was really important for me to recognize, and it was a stepping stone. For me, I realized I couldn't do this, this stuff about managing my eating my emotions, my relationship with my body, my relationship with food, I couldn't manage it alone. So I tried Weight Watchers, and I joined Weight Watchers. And to be honest with you, I loved Weight Watchers, because I loved the community of women. I loved the community of women. And I was a member, I became a meeting leader, and I became a trainer. So for a small chunk of the 1990s, I was involved in the Weight Watchers Corporation. And and my program find body freedom was born out of an epiphany from having joined Weight Watchers. And is it okay, if I

Sabrina  6:25  
continue? Yes, please share this epiphany. Okay,

Ilene  6:29  
quite an epiphany. And don't laugh at me, you have to promise because it's kind of sort of laughable a little bit. So I'm, I'm, I'm a regular leader of groups. And I'm standing in front of my regular Wednesday night meeting, I remember Wednesday night meeting, 90 women sitting in front of me looking at me, all she has all the answers. And if we can only be her and take it all in. And I there's, as I'm looking at these faces of these wonderful women, there's a voice screaming at me and this ear, saying You are such an incredible hypocrite. You are a fraud and a hypocrite. I mean, you just binged and they're looking at you like you have all the answers. Thank goodness. So voice here did not drown out this voice here. Because there was really this kind of sort of download that I received, saying, Eileen, why are you giving away your power to someone or something outside of your body? You are the one who is an expert on your body, you are the one who's an expert on how when to eat, how much to eat, and how much and when to stop the eating all of that. And I'm listening to this voice. And this voice is starting to quiet down. And this voice is saying your body has innate wisdom. Your body is your master teacher. And that was the moment my program was born. But see, here's the bench. And this is why this is so in some ways, contradictorily ridiculous because back then, when Weight Watchers had a serving size of three graham crackers, three nuts, three Brett graham crackers as a serving size, and I had just binge on four. Not four boxes, not four sleeves for graham crackers. But that let's see. I'm a rule follower. I still am at least a little bit now. I certainly was in those days. And all of a sudden, I'm I'm binging I'm not following the rules. But that was how absolutely ridiculous it was that I'm thinking of binge can be one more graham cracker than serving size. And I realize how silly in some ways it sounds. But for many of us, we're all followers and nothing we not roll. I'm just gonna then eat out the supermarket and I'll start my diet next week. And I'm pretty sure you've heard this story before and maybe even experienced yourself. So that was the moment actually that it wasn't called back then. But find body freedom was born.

Sabrina  9:55  
Yeah. And what a beautiful story Eileen of this. Like you said This download of what am I doing? Why am I following all of these other people out here? Rather than listening to in here in your body, that innate wisdom that that trusting that your body knows what it wants and needs?

Ilene  10:19  
Right? Right? Absolutely. Absolutely. Yeah, no way, it was a real gift I have to. So it was, it was a real gift.

Sabrina  10:28  
Will you talk a little bit more about that in the body wisdom and what that means to you? Because I know some listeners are going to kind of be newer to this idea.

Ilene  10:39  
Sure, sure. Well, you know, let me trace it back to Western culture. For a moment, that teaches us everything that we need to know we can find in here. In our minds in our brains, it's all of the knowledge we need is from here. And I would say to anyone, all of the knowledge that we need is from here, down, because our bodies hold wisdom, our bodies on a cellular, on a cellular level, know what they need, they hold memory, they hold the wisdom. And to illustrate that, if we were born knowing how to to eat, we were born knowing how to eat. And what that means is if you can think back to well, you know, you went through this, if you can think back to feeding your child, as an infant, and your child, your son is crying. And you in your intuitive, intuitive maternal way knows it's because your son is hungry, you you take out bottle or breast and you feed your child. And you can see, before that happens, that baby is scrunching up fifth face turning red, the whole body starts to contract. All of that is happening. And you're giving the child nourishment. And you can feel that baby start to melt into you. That baby melts into you because it's getting fed because it's hungry. And not only that, but because mom is supplying that

Sabrina  12:36  
food. Yeah. So there's this nourishment both physically with the food, but also mentally and emotionally. If you're picking up on my cues, and you are comforting me, and you're loving me.

Ilene  12:50  
Absolutely, absolutely. And when your son or any baby is done eating, we know it pushes away battle or breast turning to tad falls asleep until the next time it gets hungry. And then the whole process starts all over again. But you're absolutely right. And there is what's really interesting for me, that connection between physical hunger and emotional comfort. So we talk about emotional eating as if it's this bad thing. Bad girl you're emotionally eating. And I guess what we're both suggesting is that we're wired in a way to be emotional eaters. We're taught from day one. Exactly. It was really healing for me, actually, to know that my desire to comfort myself was in the realm of normal, and in the realm of what is innately a part of my body wisdom. Now, once we start to tap into our brains and can recognize that there are other ways to comfort ourselves, there are other ways to get soothing, then that's when we have to please or I hate the word show. But we might want to make the transition from using food for comfort to other things as comfort, because we all need comfort.

Sabrina  14:34  
We all do. And my big thing that I always tell clients and listeners is that yes, eating to cope works. And it's not our only coping tool. So if we always use the hammer, trying to fix our house, we might be able to do some home repairs. But a hammer is not going to be very effective at cutting drywall. cutting a piece of wood. And so that's what we have a toolbox filled with other tools so that we can use food. And we can use yoga and we can use meditation and we can use Fill in the blank.

Ilene  15:11  
Right, exactly. I totally agree with you. And that's, you know, it's interesting that you talk about the toolbox, because that's how I ask clients to envision this. You are walking around with a toolbox, what color is it? What have you painted it? Have you put any decals on it? Now open it up, and what's inside, and hopefully not just snack foods, not, you know, foods that aren't fuel, that aren't going to sustain a life we want to live on a daily basis. There are the things that you are talking about tuning into music, reading a book, calling a friend, giving ourselves a manicure or a pedicure, all of those kinds of things that we can find. And my list might look very different. My tools might look very different than your tools are my clients tools. But the point is, we have a toolbox. Yeah. Such a

Sabrina  16:19  
good point, I lean that. We often try to put everything in this one size fits all, or this this one approach is the approach. And we all have to follow it to a tee. And that's not true at all. Because we're so individualized. And you're right, what works for me might not work for you. It might great, we can do it together. Right? Exactly. If it doesn't work, that's okay. I'm not going to shame you and say no, Eileen, you have to do it this way. This is

Ilene  16:49  
exactly, exactly it. Also, what you're saying sounds a lot like we grew up believing many of us that there's only one shape or size body. That is beautiful. And of course how that message that we got we certainly get from media, but many of us I was one of them received from parents, from other family members from classmates, our peers, that message it ties us to it's it's that link then to a diet mentality, which makes it all the more difficult to start to tap into the intuitive wisdom of the body, which flies in the face of that.

Sabrina  17:38  
Let's talk a little bit more about that, because we've kind of hinted at it with the Weight Watchers, we've kind of hinted at it with the word diet. And my listeners know that I'm very non diet, very healthy at Every Size. But I'm curious if you would share your perspective on why diets aren't the answer?

Ilene  18:00  
Well, we could start off by multi decades worth of research that says they don't work. And research statistically comes up with about a 95% or 95 percentage of women, men also who go on diets gain their weight back. And some of them more, in some say one year, some say two years, some say three to five years, the point being that diets are only a temporary fix to a problem that really has very little to do with our bodies. It has to do with our desire to be loved, to be accepted. To find happiness in our lives. And so we'll start with the research. So one of the things, you know what is 95% means, Sabrina, if there are 100 people who are standing in the room that I'm looking at, that you're talking from, okay, 100 people, five of them in one to five years are going to have maintained that way. Five, in other words, 95 people fail. And I kept failing, and failing and failing. And I'm not even sure that I got that piece. What really solidified things for me is when I I really started to tap into my body wisdom that what was the thing Okay, so if diets don't work, what does and when I first started the program in 1992, intuitive eating wasn't part of it wasn't it wasn't part of the culture that term, okay, natural eating attune to eating demand feeding those things, which basically mean the same thing. Those were the things that I was reading about. And I did, I did a lot of reading and a lot of research in order to develop the program because I wanted something that was not only a lien based, but was science based, psychologically based. And so it was the real turning point. For me, I might be very long from the question here. But when I started to, to say, Oh, it's okay to eat, when you're hungry, I get hunger signals. That's the cue, feed yourself. But feed yourself fuel foods, feed yourself, feel, feed yourself, foods that are going to fuel your brain and your body to do the stuff of daily living. That what really shifted me out of emotional eating into a body based, I feed myself according to what my body says I need. And sometimes my body says, you need an I will actually get pictures in my mind or tunafish. That's a signal that I I need more protein, that protein has been lagging, okay. Or I'll get an image of red, yellow and orange fruits and vegetables. I need more vitamin C, beta carotene, you know, whatever it is, I need more vegetables and fruits in my life. And when I started to pay attention to not just how my body looked, but how my body felt after it got fed, just like that little baby was just so content. That's what turned the tide for me.

Sabrina  22:14  
Well, speaking of that, like yeah, getting in tune, and that with that body wisdom, do you have some practical tips that you can give the listeners to help them maybe if they're newer in this attunement journey?

Ilene  22:28  
Yeah, I do, actually. And let's start with something that some things that have absolutely nothing to do with food and eating. Okay, I don't know about you. And I hope this is okay to say on air. But, um, I know when I have to pay, I know when my body is saying, you have to go to the bathroom, and release urine. Okay. And no matter how hard I've tried over the years, because I thought I could control this body. Um, there comes a point in time, whether I'm forced to go or it's not a happy situation with having to release. So the point is, we have a body prostheses that are automatic to us, they have absolutely nothing to do with what's going on in our brains, or in our minds, and they have absolutely nothing to do with control. It has to do with body processes. That's the language of the body. Sleep is another thing. We can only go for so long, shoving caffeine, this is coffee, down our throats without having to go to sleep. And we know that we need sleep in order to operate effectively. Our bodies can only go for so long our bodies can go. We can go without food longer than we can go without you just filled your cup with water.

We can go without food longer than we can go without water in our bodies, ourselves, our brains need hydration. So there are some automatic things which most of us would say, Oh, I understand that. I get that. The hardest thing though, for many of us women is because we've been acculturated to feel like hunger is bad. Um, hunger means that there is this wild beast inside of us that if we indulge her, she is going to go non stop and not only is she going to eat The good foods in the refrigerator, then she's going to run to the nearest convenience store, and the whole candy section out and the chips and the this and that because that wild beast lives inside. And the point being that the wild beast does not live inside hungers, grunting. And this is part two of what really turned it for me that I adopted the belief that hunger is saying, my body needs fuel, just like the light on your gas age down at the bottom that will light up to show an empty chain says, Hey, your car needs fuel. No, no matter what we do, the car is not going to go without fuel. And the same thing applies to our bodies, our bodies are not going to go without fuel. Now, what octane Am I putting in my car? You know, I say to my clients, so let's pretend we're driving someplace. And oh, you notice that the light on the gas gauges on and we pull in to the gas station and I pull up on the driver I pull up to a tank that says sugar water? Well, of course we know there's no such thing, but pretend for a second. So if I put sugar water in my gas gauge what's going to happen? What's gonna happen, the car is gonna either die there or die out on the street. Because our cars won't go without the right fuel. Our bodies won't go without the right fuel. So I started to understand the larger context, which was, my body is this miracle. It's almost magical. It has everything I need to know housed in it. And if I am eating when I'm hungry, no, if I am first understanding that my body needs fuel foods to operate, if I'm eating when I'm hungry, I'm getting whatever I want. Keeping healthy nutrition in mind, no good foods, no bad foods, no red light foods, all of those kinds of foods. No, food is food. But there is a difference between fuel food and what I call recreational food. Food, we can play with it every now and again. Because I'm not a purist. By any means. When it comes to food. And we can stop eating, we're more comfortable slash full wherever we land. After some people say a month, it took me much longer, six months a year, we're going to come to our natural weight. My natural way was not my weight watchers way. It was more than that my natural way, was less than what it was at my highest. Because of course, I was emotional eating all the time. So I hope that helps your listeners.

Sabrina  28:20  
And I just want to like paraphrase and make sure that like summarizing everything. So what I heard you say is that one, we need to start being aware of all of those bodily signals, whether that's the need to use the restroom, whether that's the need to drink water, the need to sneeze,

Unknown Speaker  28:40  
the need to cough, the need

Sabrina  28:42  
to eat. And then when we recognize those and honor those, then we can start to build that innate wisdom. And that's going to help us really get more in tune with those hunger cues, those fullness cues so that we can eat whatever we want. Because we're eating what our body wants me go perfect, and we're eating to a level of comfort. Not that as we're coming up on at the time of this recording, the Thanksgiving holiday of you know wearing your your Thanksgiving pants so that we can make sure we we have all of that in. When we listen to all of those bodily messages. And we honor those messages. Their relationship with food in our body just kind of magically fixes itself.

Ilene  29:34  
Yes, it does. It stabilizes it. Hunger becomes our friend. Food becomes our friend. Okay, and we're no longer in a conflictual relationship with hunger or with food and we're not in conflict with our bodies anymore. And what you said is perfect, perfectly stated. Wonderful.

Sabrina  30:01  
So I know before I hit the record button, we were talking about this really exciting thing that has recently happened to you. Would you mind telling us a little bit about your book reflections of a fat girl.

Ilene  30:15  
It's called Reflections of a fat girl. Wisdom Lost and Found from growing up overweight. And it it's not a book about me, per se. But I'm on every page of the book. And this is why from I now live in South Florida, when I was when my husband and I were living in Plattsburgh, New York, beautiful country on the shores of Lake Champlain. Unbelievably cold in the winter time, particularly as we got older. Anyway, I digress. When I lived in Plattsburgh, I for 10 years, I had a private practice. And I wrote a private psychotherapy practice. And I wrote a month, I had a monthly column in a women's a local women's magazine. And I wrote monthly about women. I wrote about the above body wisdom about, about the fashion industry, the diet industry, I just wrote and wrote and wrote. And so I had all of these articles that were published, and I of course kept copies of, and my husband kept poking, prodding, poking, pushing, you should put those into a book. And so finally, when I closed private practice, and had a little bit more time on my hands, once we moved down here, I decided, okay, okay. I will put the articles into a book. And those articles are in the book reflections of a fat girl. And there are five chapters in the book. One is on body acceptance, and body positivity. The next one is Are you hungry? What for? Hungry? Are you emotionally physically hungry? What do you really want to hear? The next chapter is on, you can't full body wisdom. And then there's a sub headline, so why not follow yours, and that's about body wisdom. And then it's not selfish. Um, it's self love, and how often for women, we interpret ways in which we can take care of ourselves as being selfish, because everybody else has to get their needs met first. And actually, it's not selfish, it's self love. And then finally, a, like a potpourri chapter on culture, society, men an aging. So the book is all about all things, women, and it has such tremendous, I truly believe respect for us, and how challenging it is for us to live in a culture that kind of sort of expects us to do everything, including have a perfect body, you know, to to reach the heights of our professional careers, while we're breastfeeding a child and going to the gym 24/7. And of course, all of these things are kind of sort of impossible. But the book has such respect for the challenges that women have, number one, and they include lots of stories, stories about me, obviously, anonymously, many of my clients who are my heroes, who grappled with their issues, and they came out, maybe not being Zen but maybe feeling a whole lot better about themselves, their bodies, their lives. And you'll laugh, you'll laugh, you'll laugh at me, and maybe shed a few tears because women will read about themselves in in the book and, you know, some of the things are a little painful. But I think it's and tips and tools in there for how to use intuitive eating, as, in some ways a basis For positive body image

Sabrina  35:03  
sounds wonderful. Where can people find your book?

Ilene  35:06  
It's on Amazon in the hardcopy. It's also in ebook form on Amazon. Also right on my website, you can get the hardcopy, you can get the ebook. Right? They're

Sabrina  35:21  
wonderful. Before we say farewell. Is there any other wisdom any anything else that you want the listeners to know,

Ilene  35:31  
the words that just came to me was patience. I think that we are as women acculturated to feel that diets are a quick fix. Trying to live an authentic life in your own authentic body, which is your home for this lifetime requires patience. And it requires love. We have to learn to love our bodies and be patient with the changes that they will eventually make when we give them what they need.

Sabrina  36:17  
I love that. Eileen,

Ilene  36:18  
thank you. Can I add one thing?

Sabrina  36:21  
Yes, please do. Okay,

Ilene  36:23  
we women, when we owe it to the next generation of women, our daughters, our granddaughters are great granddaughters, the little girl down the street, we always to the next generation of women and beyond to get our acts together. Because even after all of the statistics out there that say, we are young women, young girls are in the throes of life threatening eating disorders. We're still seeing the media messages, we're still seeing the social media, stuff that really does send a message, you'll only be okay if you work a certain way. And this perpetuates the problem of eating disorders which are life threatening. So I ask all of us, take this into your heart, and let's get our own stuff in order. Please,

Sabrina  37:32  
for ourselves and for woman kind and, and just and just human kind because, I mean, yes, this podcast and both of us kind of focus more on women. But men men aren't immune to this. I

Unknown Speaker  37:48  
know and there are a rising number of eating disorders in males.

Sabrina  37:53  
Well, Eileen, thank you so much for coming on the show. I will make sure to put your link so people can find you on social media. They can find your website which will have your book. I'll also put a little blurb and probably a link to Amazon for your book. So if people want that easy to find I have to do is go in the show notes.