Parts Work or Internal Family Systems (IFS) is a model developed by Dr. Richard Schwartz. Dr. Schwartz has formerly served as a family therapist and he recognized a significant resemblance between the interpersonal dynamics relationships with family members and our own relationship we have with our internal personality parts.
Read MoreSticking with a new venture sometimes feels even harder than beginning one. A little of the newness dissipates and some of the shine seems slightly less lustrous. I recently heard a phrase, “familiarity breeds contempt.” And it stopped me in my tracks; it was the truest thing I’d heard in a long time. So how do we keep ourselves in motion once the initial energy burst has expired?
Read MoreI love seeing all my clients reach their checkpoints! Eating and enjoying foods they haven't had in so long, making peace with their bodies, understanding the eating disorder, learning about how diet culture plays a role in the maintenance of their behaviors, and so much more! However, I want more for them and for you. I want you to go all the way to the finish line- to feel no ties to disordered eating, to have a full and compassionate relationship with food and your body. You deserve the world. You deserve full recovery.
Read MoreFor me, freedom has always existed in a boundary. When I didn’t have a boundary, I didn’t know where to go, what to do, or how to function. The meal plan served as my boundary. For the most part I now eat and move intuitively. However, if struggles were to pop back up, I can go back to the basics of the meal plan to guide me.
Read MoreChanging my social media lead me to the body-positive movement in 2014 which lead me to Health at Every Size ® (HAES ® ), the fat-positive movement, and Intuitive Eating (IE). It blew my mind! Talk about a life-changing moment. If I never changed my social media then I would have never found the movements that helped me recover.
Read MoreThe first, and most important, healing mechanism I would like to mention is: your mindset. When I was in the midst of my recovery, I was told a piece of advice that I still carry with me and spread to others to this day. If you want to get better, YOU have to make the choice. YOU have to help yourself. YOU have to push yourself.
Read MoreSlowly I broke down the rules I held around food and exercise and gave myself FULL PERMISSION to eat what I truly wanted without limits and move my body in a way that actually felt good instead of compulsive and self-punishing. Yes, it felt very scary at first. I definitely thought I was “messing up” and would never be able to “control” myself around the foods I deemed as “off limits,” but much to my surprise this didn’t happen.
Read MoreUnplanned Food Exposures: One thing that made a huge difference in my recovery from restricting, and I now teach my clients, was to eat foods I couldn’t count.
Read MoreChanging my environment and finding a community that supported me (as I am) definitely helped me in the final stages of my recovery. This community included individuals on social media, in my workplace, in my personal life… but also me. I am the most important individual in the community that supports me.
Read MoreThis is my recovery journey. It wasn’t fun, it wasn’t easy, but it was one-hundred percent worth it. There were days when I just wanted to quit and there were days when I actually did. But the difference between recovering and not is making the conscious decision to listen to your true, authentic self or to your eating disorder, and this decision means everything.
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