She Overcame Disordered Eating and Became a Successful Business Owner

Overcoming Disordered Eating and Finding Business Success with Jessica Battle – YouTube
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5K89U6JyktI

Transcript:
(00:00) you’re not in control of everything in your life but you are in control of who you choose to be you’re in control of how you choose to think and the behaviors that you choose to participate in and I want to help women and men if they’re interested in my message take their personal power back and really learn to create the life that they want for themselves because I spent you know 30 years of my life my entire life that I can remember struggling with everything never feeling good enough never feeling satisfied never feeling
(00:30) happy and I I thought that this is just the way it’s going to be and when I started working on my mindset I began to realize actually I can create the future that I want for myself and I just want to show people you can control things in your life and if you choose to take the responsibility to control those things you can create outcomes in your life that will literally blow you away and you can live a life that is so freaking amazing but you have to take responsibility for that and and that’s my goal is to help people learn how to
(00:59) do that hello everyone and welcome to the flow over fear podcast where it is our mission to help you to rise above fear and realize your ultimate potential in leadership and life I’m your host Adam Hill and it is my goal to share with you the human side of high performance my guests share their experience with fear anxiety struggle challenged and most importantly despite all of it how they Rose above it to a achieve incredible results so if you’re ready to rise up let’s get started hello everyone and
(01:37) welcome to flow over fear thank you so so much for being here today we have a great show lined up today uh because we’re going to talk some talk about something that’s near and dear to me and uh and a lot of people out there and a lot of people who struggle with this uh my guest today is incredibly inspirational for what she has been through what she has overcome and and and how she’s redefined and empowered her life and now empowers the lives of other women and people in in the world it’s just amazing and this is going to
(02:09) be a great great conversation my guest is Jessica battle and she’s a coach a motivational speaker uh and Lifestyle influencer on the join Jessica XO social platforms on all the social platforms where she’s best known for inspiring women to become the best versions of themselves Jessica has lost over one 00b twice which has led to being featured in People Magazine on oprah.
(02:37) com as well as in The Huffington Post and after years of after overcoming disordered eating and years of yo-yo dieting she has built a successful online business mentoring women in creating the mindset shifts that help them achieve the change that they desire in themselves their relationships with food and their businesses she hosts the wildly popular the the queen of pep talks podcast where she and her guests help people to get out of their own way and step into greatness Jessica thank you so much for joining me today I appreciate it of
(03:11) course I’m really excited to have a conversation with you thank you for asking me to come on oh absolutely and uh we met recently and uh uh we we spent kind of the last six months together going through this really really great program uh called heroic public speaking uh where we where we’re learning to craft our speech and you have a very very powerful meage message and first of all congratulations for seeing that through because not only now are you a motivational speaker you’re a certified uh motivational speaker who’s been
(03:39) through an extensive training course and your message is just that much powerful so congratulations for that thank you congratulations to you too I know that when we’ve chatted at HPS I’ve shared with you too that your message is just so important and it’s so empowering for people to recognize that you can face fear headon and overcome the things that you’re afraid of to create the life that you really want I admire you and your message as well congratulations to you oh thank you yeah we we have similar
(04:05) messages little different backgrounds but I know that that uh uh you know that that addiction takes many forms and a lot of times um you know uh our minds take us into Dark Places and um and and a lot of the beauty that comes out of that is is is you know how we overcome those or or or or those kinds of things so I I love to get into your backstory and just hear a little bit about from from you you know what your origin story was how where you came from how um and and what uh what shaped you into Jessa you that you are today yeah so I think
(04:42) that my relationship with food and the struggles that I’ve experienced really started with my dad I I use the word abandon and I know that that’s a really strong word but from my perspective really feels like what he did to my family um when I was 9 years old my parents had separated and he very quickly moved on to a new Rel relationship and decided to marry a woman who lived in Louisiana I’m from Pennsylvania so to put in perspective a 22-hour car ride away and when he left to marry this woman he adopted her
(05:13) children and kind of just forgot about the family that he had and moved on and created a new family I didn’t see my dad again for 10 years which was really really hard for me and the way that I found an ability to cope through that was turning to food and that started at a really young age and I think at a young age I also realized that my relationship with food and my body were really different than what I saw around me and I grew up with two brothers who were not afraid to tease me and let me know like oh my God you eat so much or
(05:45) how are you hungry again or oh you’re so fat like the things that brothers would say to their sister that I took really personally and when I looked around I realized I am bigger than other girls I don’t look like other girls I can’t share clothes with my best friends we also didn’t have the money for for me to be shopping at the stores that most young girls at the time were shopping at so from a really young age I had very low self-confidence very low self-worth I didn’t have a father figure in my life
(06:10) so I started at a really young age looking for that validation and acceptance in boys at 13 14 years old I was looking for love from people outside of myself as well as comfort in food and very quickly found myself approaching 300 lb in my teens I was 19 years old and I was very close to 300 lb and I believed at the time that if I lost weight my life would be better I thought that living in a smaller body would create the happiness and the love and the validation that I wanted for so much of my life so I started my first
(06:46) diet at 19 years old and it was incredibly unhealthy which at the time I didn’t realize was exacerbating my the problems in my relationship with food it was actually making my disordered eating far worse because I now was like heavily restricting my calories and seeing that doing that would lead to really rapid weight loss which is what I really wanted so it was like here I am basically starving myself in an attempt to lose weight and unfortunately when I got to my goal weight at the time I had lost 100 pounds when I got there I I
(07:17) thought like this is when life is going to be good right like I’m going to be happy and life is going to be amazing I won’t have problems anymore I’ll just be confident feel good about myself but when I got to my goal weight I didn’t feel really any different all and at the time I didn’t know that it was because I hadn’t worked on the way that I thought about myself or the way that I felt about myself I thought changing my body was the answer which is I think a lot of women feel that way men too probably
(07:43) believe that if I just live in a different body if I look different if people see me differently then I’m going to feel different about myself and unfortunately that wasn’t the result and the bigger problem there was that I hadn’t really learned anything about taking care of myself I went on this quick fix diet to lose weight and as soon as I got to my goal weight I quit doing everything that I was doing that got me there and I very quickly put every pound that I had lost back on and that was a really dark period of my life
(08:13) because I was beginning to realize how dysfunctional my relationship with food was because here I am now in my 20s I’ve lost this weight and I’m very quickly gaining it back I started to realize that I didn’t know how to live and eat in a normal way I only knew how to live and eat in extremes where I’m either like really strictly dieting to lose weight or I’m on the other end of the spectrum and like binge eating and emotionally eating and quickly putting weight back on um so after that I I
(08:42) ended up committing to changing my life again and I I lost 100 lbs again um but again still getting to my smallest weight I didn’t feel the way that I thought that I would I still was convinced that my body was the issue and it it took me me getting to a breaking point in my life where I was getting ready to get married and I went on another really strict diet I got down to the smallest I’d ever been I weighed less than I did in the fourth grade and I was having this realization of like I have everything that I want in my life I
(09:16) had my incredible husband who I thought was like the answer to all of my daddy issues right I’m living in this skinny body that I thought was the answer to my confidence and the validation and acceptance that I needed from the world but when I looked in the mirror I still was really struggling to feel what I wanted to feel and um the last diet that I went on was in 2017 and when I got married on my honeymoon I very very quickly went back to binge eating and in 11 days I gained 21 lbs during my honeymoon and when I
(09:48) came home I was like wow like just having this huge realization of like if you don’t focus on something else you’re going to live in this cycle for the rest of your life you’re going to lose weight and then and crash and burn and put weight back on you have to address the deeper issues so I started looking at my relationship with food and how do I fix that I started looking at my self-worth and my confidence and ask myself how do you how do you build yourself up in a way that isn’t dependent on being as
(10:15) small as possible I did a lot of healing work and therapy around my relationship with my dad to try and figure out like how do I overcome these things that I’ve been using kind of as an excuse to treat myself this way and for the last six and a half years I’ve been working really hard on the parts of myself that I spent my entire life avoiding I stopped obsessing over my body and I started focusing on who I am as a person and it’s genuinely led to a happier and more fulfilling life than I ever could
(10:45) have imagined my body was never the problem it was the way that I thought about myself that was the problem wow I I I love that last um sentence that you you said there and I mean your whole story is incredible as far as the self as far as building and developing that awareness of of of knowing that it it’s not your body that’s the issue it’s it’s you know fixing really what’s inside in those deeper issues uh I can you know relate to a lot of that in in terms of you know um of of you know drinking
(11:18) heavily when I was younger and and no no longer drinking not not becoming alcoholic but then like kind of transferring my my energy or my my addiction over to something is stream as like Iron Man and trying to like get as fast as I could you know that that I I it there’s you know a lot there’s nothing wrong with chasing those kinds of dreams but like if we’re not addressing what’s inside you know that that’s so problematic so what what is it you know as far as the thought of uh being you know you’d mentioned that
(11:50) first time that you lost weight that the thought of being skinny that that would kind of fix everything you know are we where where is that thought coming from is that Society bringing us to that because I know that a lot of people women and men and and probably mostly women struggle with that where’s that coming from it’s really interesting I just saw the other day on social media from a friend that I follow and I thought this was so beautiful and a thought that will probably stick with me forever she was
(12:20) filming a video of her daughter who was maybe 10 or 11 months old and she’s standing pressed up against the mirror and she’s looking at herself and she’s just smiling so much she’s so happy to see her reflection just like wowed by seeing herself and everything that she does she’s giggling at and smiling at and my friend posted this reminds me that we inherently love our Reflections and we we are born thinking that we’re incredible and that we’re beautiful it’s the world that starts to tell us
(12:51) otherwise and I mean at age six and seven I was being told that I was fat by my brothers and then I went to school and was bullied and told that I was you know fat and I should lose weight and I remember when I started dating guys saying oh you’d be so pretty if you just lost 50 lbs or you’d be datable if you just lost 50 lbs and watching like America’s Next Top Model and they’re screaming at a 100b models that they’re too fat so it’s like my gosh I do think that Society tells us that unless you’re
(13:23) thin and I do think that now things are getting better I do see a shift but I remember growing up like standing in the grocery store line in 17 magazine being like here’s five ways to lose 20 PBS in the next 10 days like just being told over and over and over and also I love my mom dearly but her messaging of telling me like if you just do this you’ll lose a little bit of weight or watching her pick her own body apart or restricting her own food so that she didn’t gain weight I just remember from
(13:53) every angle in my life it was like being overweight or being fat is wrong or bad and I think coupled with the self-esteem issues that I had because of my dad feeling like if this man who’s supposed to love me more than anyone else in the world doesn’t love me then clearly there’s something wrong with me and I felt I probably would have felt that way even if I was thin so I think that being overweight and hearing that message from the world on top of my own already insecurities because of my relationship
(14:20) with my dad um I think that yeah society makes us feel that way and then we get in the habit of telling ourselves that Society is right so start to believe that we’re wrong when we’re overweight yeah that’s and and it’s it’s so hard I mean when when yeah we we are living in the society where we look at what we would consider this easy superficial solution of of oh if I just lose weight if I just get skinny and then there’s there’s hundreds of of options out there on how we can do that most of which
(14:53) involve restriction by the way it’s just you know it it’s it’s it’s it’s suppressing the the issues that we should be looking at you know and and really reinforcing this idea and I see it especially with having kids now I mean we I I see it in in our own kids and and how hard it is and um and yeah it’s it it’s it’s so yeah it’s it’s hard to reconcile a lot of that but uh you know you’re talk a little bit about how your relationship with with food you know how that how that changed
(15:30) um and I see that a lot too where even like you know it’s not that that we tend to have at least and maybe tell me if I’m wrong about this but this is kind of just what I see out there we have this this bias in our society that that the biggest epidemic is the Obesity epidemic but and maybe I just see this personally but I see the that there’s another silent epidemic of of eating disorder disordered eating that leads to anorexia bulimia all that that kind of other stuff um that is that is just as
(16:03) tragic if not absolutely way yeah yeah yeah but I also think that there’s a stigma when it comes to eating disorders in that you have to look a certain way to have an eating disorder like there are very normalized women who are walking around and you would look at and think nothing is wrong but they’re struggling with disordered eating behind the scenes Maybe that’s binging and purging or maybe that’s just heavily restricting and skipping meals there’s this disordered eating whereas obesity
(16:36) you can look at someone and see that so it’s easy to sit in a room and look around and think wow these people are obese but when there are people struggling with disordered eating you can’t always tell by looking at them and I’ve seen from women that I’ve been connected with on social media that that’s a problem that they go to the doctor and they’re normal size and they want to talk about disordered eating and the doctor’s like well you’re a normal weight so there’s no problem here if
(16:59) they can’t have a disordered relationship with food just because they’re a normal weight yeah yeah I I I see that a lot too especially when we go to the doctors for certain things like that and you know we have some disordered eating in our family side so we so it’s always about like the we how much gravity pulls us down onto the Earth it’s that that’s somehow the metric of that but there’s so much more to it and yeah and and so it’s it’s it’s sad that from the standpoint of our
(17:28) medical industry that that is like the one metric that we use and and not other psychological metrics so you so uh so you uh mentioned therapy did you go the therapy route or do you mind me asking if if that’s the route that that you took to kind of reshape the relationship with food yeah so when it came to my relationship with food I did not choose to do therapy um I had been in therapy when I was younger because of things with my dad and I have experienced being in therapy as an adult for other things
(17:59) but when I to be quite truthful with you when I set out on a journey to heal my relationship with food much like every other thing that I’ve done in my life I didn’t really think that it was going to happen because I was chronically a woman who was good at starting things but never really following through with them so I had successfully lost this weight twice but I mean I had started probably 200 300 diets in my life right I dropped out of College seven times I quit jobs left and right I moved Apartments like
(18:33) everything that I started in my life I very quickly as soon as things got hard or challenging it was like oh I’m done with this so when I started this journey to Healing my relationship with food I was in a really dark place and I felt like this was my only option but if I’m being quite honest I didn’t I didn’t ever think that I would actually get to the point where I am today so I didn’t even want to commit to something like seeking professional help I wanted to I started by reading a book and I read a
(19:00) book called brain over binge and the author her name is Katherine Hansen and it was the first time in my life that I had ever felt like someone understood what I was going through because there are so many things in life and I’m sure you resonate with this when you going through something that’s really hard there’s a lot of Shame there and embarrassment and you don’t really want to tell people about it there weren’t many people in my life that even knew my struggles with my relationship with food my husband didn’t even know I
(19:30) had hidden this from as many people as I could because I was so embarrassed of like how do you feel so out of control with food like why can you just not stop eating I thought that there was something really wrong with me and I remember having an episode where I actually locked myself out of my house while my husband was at work because I could not stop eating like I had probably eatting 15,000 calories that day and I knew if I went back in my house as sick as I felt and as out of control as I felt and as sad as I felt I
(20:01) would just keep eating because I felt really powerless so I had recorded this video on social media and I I decided to myself if I’m going to be an influencer who shares my life with people I am not only going to share the good parts of my life with people so I decided to post this video and I remember thousands of comments on the video from people saying wow thank you so much for sharing this I I really resonate I’ve been through this my myself and people were recommending that I read this book called brain over
(20:32) binge and so I started it and I read probably half of it and by the time I got halfway through it I was like I’m not ready to actually do this I’m not ready to face this head on so I put the book down and I just ignored it and I put on a bunch of weight during that time and then I pulled the book back out and I read it again and then I read it again and again and again I probably read the book 10 times and I really took the words that she shared to heartt because I felt like she understood and sometimes when you’re going through
(21:02) something that there’s so much shame attached to you just want to feel like you’re not the only one that’s going through it and with therapy I think therapy can be incredibly beneficial but most therapists don’t relate to everything that you’re going through and this book for me was profoundly life-changing and gave me the tools that I needed to start to start taking the steps in the right direction and then I started reading as many books as I could about healing my relationship with my
(21:28) body learning to become an intuitive and mindful eater how I can stop binge eating how I can start coping with my emotions without turning to food and I really spent the next probably 18 months to two years just like down a rabbit hole of learning as much as I could about healing myself yeah that’s that’s hugely powerful and that’s really courageous not a lot of people certainly um who are putting themselves out there as influencers would you know would would share information that vulnerably like that especially when it’s when it’s
(21:58) it’s raw um but I’ve I’ve you know I can I can relate a lot to that too because going through you know alcoholism and I’m not I don’t want to make a comparison between you know maybe disordered eating that people might be going through in alcoholism though they’re they’re similar they’re not same but um but I remember you know obviously when you when you go through healings you go through alcoholics annonymous which is a great you know great program not promoting it just it’s something
(22:25) that worked for me um but I found that the the the biggest Transcendence that I was able to come come to in in healing from that was being open about the story um did you and and I don’t want to promote that people kind of go out there and share from their open wounds right now or anything like that but I’m just curious it was that so that that was kind of an inflection point for you where where that healing started where you shared openly about the struggles you’re going through and realize that
(22:55) you’re not alone MH is that right yeah absolutely and I I do agree I don’t I would never encourage someone to go out there and share just for the sake of like wanting to be relatable or wanting to feel like they’re being vulnerable I think the only time that you should do it is when it’s genuine and you really want to and feel safe to I think feeling safe to share is really really important um I really trusted my community at that point in time and I I knew I just felt like it was my responsibility
(23:29) to show the good and the bad but more than anything I I began to realize at that time much like you’re saying Adam like I began to realize that putting words to how I feel and saying it out loud makes the situation so much more real right it’s not just like these thoughts that are playing on repeat in my own mind it’s like I’ve given them words and I’ve put language to it and I’ve expressed the way that I feel and I think that when you start to do that and you allow yourself to really see how
(23:56) real the situation is that’s when you can really start to process through it and make changes because you’ve admitted it and it’s like acknowledging and admitting are the first part of creating change and until you take ownership of that and at that time it was like it was my dirty little secret like I didn’t want anybody to know and then when I aired it out it was like wow like it feels good to just say that this is my truth and I don’t have to hide this anymore and when you take off that
(24:20) barrier of feeling like you have to hide it’s like you give yourself the permission to start taking the steps to overcome yeah yeah so so you were so at that time you were you when you uh kind of made that public uh announcement you were already an influencer so to speak you’d already been so were were you uh at that time were you helping women through and people through business or or just through weight loss or how were you I wasn’t yeah I wasn’t doing any coaching at that time so my social media
(24:49) Instagram specifically I started about 10 years ago and it really became a diary for my weight loss journey and it was a place where I would show up and you you know share before and after pictures and inspire people and motivate people to lose weight and encouraging them by sharing what workouts I was doing and the meals that I was eating very very different than it is today um and then that led to a lot of the media Publications being in in People magazine and on Oprah and the Huffington Post and my um Instagram gained popularity and
(25:19) people were following me for weight loss inspiration sure and it’s taken a really radical shift since then because I don’t I don’t think there’s anything wrong with wanting to lose weight but I am not I’m very much not in alignment with the things that I used to say so at the time I was just a social media influencer who was doing brand collaborations and like people would send me protein snacks to share and promote and makeup to share and promote and workout clothes to share and promote so I was doing like brand
(25:47) ambassador um work at the time but I wasn’t doing any coaching no my coaching didn’t start until I spent almost two years working on myself and it in the way beyond my body working on my mind and my relationship with food and I documented the entire Journey everything that I was reading everything that I was implementing everything that I was saying to myself every exercise that I was doing like mental exercise perspective shift I was sharing everything and then people were coming to me and saying like wow I see such a
(26:17) difference in who you are today versus who you were two years ago your confidence your selfworth the way that you talk the way you show up the things that you care about your consistency they saw me as a different person and they started saying I want to achieve what you’ve achieved can you please help me and that’s how my coaching business was really born that’s incredible yeah and and and I know that that’s a it sounds like that’s a very a very that that made the decision to kind of go
(26:44) forward about that vulnerable piece more difficult because you already have this this base of followers and this audience and and now you’re you’re basically doing you know one post that’s going to shift the entire traj did you know at that time that that would shift the trajectory sorry trajectory of your brand of your brand um I don’t I don’t think at the time that I realized how impactful sharing that was going to be I I was in a place where I was in a really dark place myself at the time and I I think I just
(27:18) wanted to I wanted to share with people more than anything else and I think I even said in the video like I share a lot of smiles and motivation here with you but let’s not ever forget that there’s so much going on behind the screen for people that you don’t see that they’re not sharing with you and I think at the time my intention was yes to share what I was struggling with but also to remind people let’s not put social media on a pedestal let’s not idolize people who are also human and struggling with
(27:47) things behind the scenes and it definitely did I don’t know if it was immediately that it shifted the trajectory of things but over the last several years yeah I’ve had people who don’t resonate with what I share anymore they are still very much on the weight loss yo-yo dieting bandwagon and and that’s okay um but I would not hold myself back from pivoting my brand in the way that’s fully in alignment with who I am now I think that we have to give ourselves permission to grow and change and with that our brands are
(28:15) going to evolve and people will stick around and people won’t and we have to be okay with that yeah yeah I love I love that and and I’d love to get into the business side of of things because I know that you uh you you run a very success uccessful coaching business and and and help help other people to to grow their own businesses I understand it and I want to kind of tie up some Loops just to make sure that you know we kind of get into a little bit more with the relationship with food because I’d
(28:42) love to know what that means to you how how uh you know when we’re when we’re I guess flooded with these visions of of diets that are restrictive like you know thinking keto or and and not saying bad things about them they all have their place but right but but but when we’re flooded with those kind of restrictive diets saying this works for everybody this will work for weight loss all this kind of stuff what is a what does a healthy relationship with food look like yeah or is that just too big of a
(29:14) question no no I don’t think it’s too big of a question at all I think that the problem is that there it’s not a one-sized fits all right and I think for for women and I’ll I’ll share with you what a healthy relation ship with food means to me but I think that for women who have struggled with years of yo-yo dieting and disliking their bodies one of the biggest problems is that they have constantly looked to someone else to tell them how they’re supposed to eat right like I’m going to follow this keto
(29:41) diet or I’m going to follow Weight Watchers or I’m going to followed this meal plan from the fit Fitness influencer who wrote this for me or from my personal trainer at the gym and they’ve lost complete trust and intuition in what actually feels good for them they’re so disconnected from from their body and what actually feels good for them and what’s honoring and serving them for for me I knew that I would I knew that a healthy relationship with food for me would mean that food is just food yeah and I think for women
(30:14) listening or anyone who struggled with their relationship with Food they’ll understand what I mean when I say that but I spent so much of my life constantly thinking about eating not eating my body how food was going to impact my body would people judge me for the way that I was eating if I started eating would I be able to stop was I allowed to eat this food was I not allowed to eat this food like food was never just food for me it was this big emotional ordeal where it was like I had to ask myself six million questions am I
(30:44) dieting right now or am I binging right now is this a food that’s good or is this a food that’s bad there was so much mental sorry if I’m not allowed to curve so much mental stuff that was just like it it was never just a a meal it was never just like sitting down and eating a meal and moving on it was either eating a meal and feeling like I was a good girl today because I chose to eat a salad and chicken or I feel like crap about myself because I ate pizza and french fries like I just wanted food
(31:12) to feel like an a part of my life that wasn’t something that consumed my mind 247 and something that really helped me begin to recognize what a healthy relationship with food looked like truthfully was being married to my husband and watching him so effortlessly sit down at a meal eat what he wanted and have food left on the plate and say I’m full and I’m like well what do you mean you’re full there’s food left on your plate he’s like well I’m full I don’t need to eat it and I’m like wait
(31:39) what do you mean you don’t have to eat it like the simplest things for me or him saying like oh I’d be like oh do you want to stop and get something to eat and him saying no I’m not hungry right now or it being 9:00 at night and he’s laying in bed and he gets up and he says you know I really want a bowl of ice cream and he lets himself get up and do it it’s like he just had the freedom and permission to eat what he wanted when he wanted but he was always honoring his body by stopping when his body said that
(32:02) was enough and that was something that I never knew how to do I was so out of touch with what my body wanted and I had no I had no intuition and no self trust to say I I believe I can sit down with a slice of pizza and just eat one and finish there so for me a healthy relationship with food is feeling like it doesn’t consume my mind 247 and I think for every person in terms of what they eat and how much they eat that’s going to look different and I think that the the blanket meal plans are a big part of the problem because it’s not
(32:32) helping people get in touch with their own hunger and fullness it’s just like here’s a little Band-Aid to help you lose weight right now but people aren’t learning anything in the long run when they’re following meal plans like that yeah so when you say blanket meal plans what do you mean by that are you is it is that just the diet programs that are out there is that what you mean yeah I think things like Weight Watchers where they’re not really taking into consideration so much of who you are and
(32:58) what you’ve been through and what your activity is and it’s like you a banana is zero points so you could eat, 1500 bananas today but is that really healthy for you do you know what I mean like there’s not and I think programs like n that have come out that are trying to focus on the mindset aspect of things in addition to the diet can be a stepping stone in the right direction but I think at the end of the day women and men who want to improve their relationship with food have to build trust within
(33:25) themselves and most importantly have to really get serious about wanting to respect the body that they live in and I think that’s a big disconnect people only want to treat their bodies well when they’re trying to lose weight and when they’re not on a diet and trying to lose weight it’s like life is a freefor all and I’m just going to do whatever I want and eat whatever I want I think if we can really get serious about caring about the body that we live in and treating it with respect via the way
(33:50) that we move it the way that we sleep the water we drink the food that we put in our bodies we we’d realize that we’ll live a much happier life life and for a lot of people weight loss will be a result of that in a way that doesn’t feel miserable and is actually going to be sustainable long term yeah yeah man I I could tell you that that I I feel like I it’s resonating a lot with me because I I’m looking at the own my own patterns that have existed in in my life and while I haven’t really struggled with
(34:16) with any weight problems I I mean I I consider myself a Binger on many fronts not just alcohol but like you know I I I I feel the uh the urge when I’m eating to continue to eat especially when it’s what we would consider like you know unhealthy like pizza or or you know things like that that that kind of stuff is just like I can’t I feel like I can’t necessar or don’t want to stop uh my body eventually makes me stop but um and and so on my path and and this is that’s it feels a little different from what
(34:55) you know maybe the rest of my family goes through which is which is the the other side of it where you know they’re they’re more inclined or or there’s a compulsion to restrict and uh and so there’s maybe different ways in which we have to go about it so that idea of like you know there that maybe not the one size fits all I find that you know what works for me is is you know I kind of have the same and this people may hate this idea but I just I have the same kind of lineup of food that I have every
(35:25) day because it works it’s like meal uh smoothie uh eggs and and rice and all this kind of stuff and and it just works and it’s it’s easy for me because I know that this is going to be the pattern but um I don’t know if that’s the right relationship but it’s worked but I do I do this I mean I I think that when and this is a big disconnect for people when they start working with me and we talk about stopping dieting stopping dieting doesn’t mean that you don’t bring intentionality to what you’re eating I
(35:56) also very much eat the same meals over and over especially during the day breakfast and lunch because it’s easy for me and if I have a busy day it’s like what do I know is a quick go-to that’s going to give me the nutrients that I need and is going to make me feel good and it’s a meal that I enjoy I don’t think there’s anything wrong with that I think the only time that that could potentially be a problem is if you’re constantly choosing those meals because you don’t trust yourself to eat
(36:21) something else if it’s like well I’m having oatmeal because if I pour a bowl of cereal then I’m going to eat 17 bowls of cereal what I mean the trust is a problem then you might want to work on thinking about how can I start incorporating different FS into my day so that I can build that trust with myself but I don’t think there’s anything wrong with eating the foods that you enjoy consistently and continuously if they’re simple they work for you they make you feel good I I do the same thing and I don’t see a problem
(36:48) with it yeah no that that’s that’s really helpful and I I appreciate that and it kind of shows you what to look for and I never I never thought of it that way as far as the trust and in intentionality those those sound like really two very important words here they are absolutely yeah one of the things I I I really you know feel I I really well I don’t struggle with but I can I can recognize certainly the struggle with with when people are kind of going through um a challenging relationship with nutrition or food is
(37:19) that you know that I for me like I could just I the the solution is stop drinking stop drinking alcohol you know and and then you know that’s that’s how you you know stop being an active alcoholic for people who have Eating Disorders or disordered eating you can’t just stop eating I mean that’s yeah so that’s that’s there’s a there’s a relationship you have to build with this thing that you know you’re feeling is abusing you that’s uh absolutely sounds difficult it’s tough It’s it’s hard and so in so
(37:51) many aspects because you can’t stop eating right and it’s like for most women who have struggled with disordered eating they’ve lived in years decades of yo-yo dieting and feeling like a diet feels like a security blanket for them and and a big part of healing your relationship with food is stopping choosing to stop restrictive dieting and that feels really hard because it feels like one of the few things that people have control of right like I can control what I put in my mouth and I can control what I choose to
(38:22) eat so it it it is very very very difficult um but for me the most rewarding part of my life and one of the things that I’m most proud of is getting to this point because I really had visions of myself at 80 or 90 years old like still struggling with this relationship with my body and with food and I was terrified of living the rest of my life that way yeah that’s um and that that’s that’s very powerful because and I know how that feels that idea of hopelessness like you can’t recover but for anybody out there that’s
(38:53) struggling with anything if you get anything from this episode it’s that that transformation is possible There’s Hope beyond the hopelessness these things happen and it just takes that that change what what would you I mean I know that this is certainly hard to answer in like a a a few minute question but if if there were just a a few suggestions or or pieces of advice you can give to someone who feels like they might be struggling right now with that with with that with disordered eating or what have you what what should
(39:25) they first be doing right now or what what would you suggest to them yeah I think that there are three things that that women or men can start doing right now to really move beyond the struggle with their relationship with food number one would be to stop dieting and I know that that feels scary but to make a commitment and and this is the mindset that I have and that I share with my clients often is you’ve committed you know 5 10 15 20 30 years of your life to dieting and you haven’t gotten the result that you’ve wanted
(39:57) can you commit the same amount of time to healing and see if you’ll get the result that you want because I know that you will if you if you will commit the same amount of time that you’ve committed to dieting to actually doing the work to heal your life will begin to change number two is to really start accepting the body that you’re living in right now because it’s it’s going to be almost impossible to stop dieting if you’re still at war with your body right it’s it’s going to be really hard for
(40:25) you to say I’m not going to control or restrict my calories if you look in the mirror and you’re calling yourself names like fat disgusting gross like you have to stop with that and it’s not it’s not as simple as like just falling in love with the body that you’re in right now but you can learn to appreciate the body that you’re in and what it does for you and Express gratitude for that and start looking at people that look like you you’re going to continue to feel like about yourself if you’re looking at
(40:51) Instagram models who are 20 years old and have sixpacks and like bubble butts you know what I mean like you have to start looking at women or men that have bodies like you so that you can start to feel like you’re normal and then the third thing that I would say is that you really have to let go of the idea that achieving anything that you want in life is going to look perfect because it’s not you’re going to make mistakes along the way you’re going to have setbacks along the way you’re going to have days where you go back to
(41:22) eating the way that you were before and you’re binging or you’re emotionally eating I have the mantras in my life that I use where every single morning when I wake up it’s like we wipe the Slate clean and today is a new day and I tell myself every day today is the first day of the rest of your life you can’t do anything to change what’s behind you but you can choose who you’re going to be today and I think when it comes to relationship with food people feel like oh I ate pizza and ice cream on a
(41:48) Thursday so like now I feel bad Friday morning wake waking up so I’m just going to sabotage myself all weekend and I’ll get back on track Monday you have to stop stop living with that kind of mentality and really see every moment when it comes to your choices with food as an opportunity to act in alignment with who you want to be and how you want to feel so I I would often ask myself when I was struggling with my relationship with food I would say Jessica how are you going to feel on the other side of this Choice are you going
(42:16) to feel good about your decision and if you are great do it but if you’re not going to feel good about this decision you need to take 60 seconds to think about is this Choice worth making because when it comes to relationship with food so many of the choices that you make they’re just autopilot choices you’re not even thinking about it it’s like I want to eat so I just go eat you don’t even give yourself an opportunity to think about is this how I want to behave and if you can create that
(42:40) self-awareness and then become intentional in your choices you’ll start to see that you can you can override the immediate thought to go eat you can make the conscious Choice it’s going to suck a little bit in the beginning but just like you’ve gotten so accustomed to turning to food immediately you can also get accustomed to questioning yourself and saying do I really need this right now yeah wow so yeah gets back to that intentionality piece being intentional about it h do do those thoughts that
(43:09) that those negative thoughts uh do those ever go away with this kind of with this all this work and this practice and everything do they go away do they come in waves how how does that look over the long term well I I think when you say negative thoughts can you be more specific because yeah of of course I have yeah negative thoughts are always there good point no I uh I think with regard to the the the shaming around food like you know with regard to that is that something you just have to live with or does it go away no excellent so
(43:39) when I when I set out on this journey six and a half years ago I had made peace with the idea that I may have to have a heightened level of self-awareness around my relationship with food forever and I was okay with that because I thought about what’s the alternative I live in this life where I’m miserable because I’m constantly binging and restricting but I can say that for the last since probably 2019 I have not felt bad about eating ever I don’t feel I I no longer associate food with my selfworth I’m no
(44:15) longer a good person if I eat healthy or a bad person if I eat something that’s unhealthy I don’t ever feel guilty for the food choices that I make because I’ve recognized I’m so much more than my physical body and I never should have felt bad about food in the first place I don’t know where I learned to feel bad about food but it’s not the way that I was meant to spend my life and I think with enough conscious redirecting around your thoughts when it comes to food you can get to a place where you don’t feel
(44:43) those negative emotions anymore that’s so powerful thank you for yeah thank you for sharing that is I think I and I hope that adds a lot of Hope to people that might be listening and struggling with that because it it does get better um so stay stay with it and so I want to kind of switch gears into the business side of it because you are incredibly successful in your in your business and and um and you know in in helping women to help build their businesses and things like that can you tell us a little bit about what you’re doing on
(45:12) that front on the coaching front how how that started and where you’re going with it yeah so my coaching business started as I talked about before I was really just openly and vulnerably sharing my life and my journey the things that I was doing and I had grown a pretty large following on social media and people were interacting with me and saying wow like I I see you living this life now where you look so happy like genuinely happy you’re in a body that you take really good care of but you’re not
(45:41) obsessed with being skinny anymore like these are the things that I want for my life how can I do this and at the time I was genuinely so naive I had no idea that the coaching industry even existed in the way that it did this was in 2019 and I thought well I guess I could create something for these women I could create some kind of program that I take them through and I thought I was like doing something Earth shatteringly amazing and no one was doing coaching I was like I’m going to create something so cool and I I did so I created this
(46:13) four-week program which has become my most popular program it’s the mind body and spirit transformation program where I work with women around their relationship with food whether that’s binge eating or emotionally eating I share all of the things that have gotten me to where I am today in terms of the mindset shifts that I had to make the body healing the the relationship with food healing and from there I guess I just grew in popularity in my coaching and seeing that I I really had the ability to help people I didn’t know in
(46:42) the beginning if I could really make a difference I didn’t know if the way that I spoke or the way that I taught or my story would resonate with people um but over the last almost four years now I’ve shockingly and I’m just mind blown by it myself sometimes had the ability to really help women completely transform the relationship that they have with themselves and with their bodies and with food I mean women who are binge free for three years now since going through my program and feel better in
(47:11) their bodies than ever before clients who stop dieting but have lost 50 or 60 pounds just through being intuitive and honoring their bodies it’s been it’s been incredible and it’s sometimes difficult for me to comprehend because I know I used to be and I know how I used to struggle so to see that the work that I chose to do on myself has now turned into this impact that I’ve been able to make is so beautiful um but probably about two years ago people were noticing that my coaching business was growing and they
(47:42) were noticing that I had different courses and I had my podcast and I had my brand on on social media and they were like can you teach me how to do the same and I said well I know how to do it I can see if I can teach you how to do the same same let same with my coaching around relationship with food I said well let’s try so I put together a program and the women came to me and they’re growing their brands they’re growing their FES they’re starting podcasts and getting downloads they’re creating their own courses and changing
(48:10) people’s lives so it’s really just been like a one step at a time figure it out as you go and I’ve been so fortunate that everything that I’ve done has been really successful in helping people get the results that they’ve wanted yeah so you you found your calling through the challenges that you’ve already you know experienced it and been through and that’s that’s such I mean that’s such a powerful uh I mean and and I just I I do want to thank you for for bringing this message out there because it it it’s so
(48:40) so important for a lot of people and I mean and and to add value where you’ve struggled in the past and where you’ve been able to overcome that’s that’s the best way in which you can add add value and um absolutely and I think it’s beautiful and I think you’re your uh the podcast that you have which is the queen of pep talks I love that name I love it it’s a great great podcast it’s a top it’s a top.
(49:05) five% podcast on on listen notes it’s Inc it’s wildly popular and uh and wildly valuable um can you talk a little bit about what you’re what you’re doing there and and uh how you help people yeah yeah so also did you add that part in the introduction about my podcast because I don’t think I sent that over I don’t think that my team wrote that you must have written I I go above and beyond here at FL I really appreciate that yeah so um the queen of pep talks we can actually thank one of my Instagram followers for
(49:37) that name because she messaged me one day and she said wow you’re really the Queen of pep talks and I was like I’m totally using that for the name of my podcast so thank you to whoever that was I appreciate them um but yeah the the podcast is is one of my favorite places to show up in my business it’s probably where I feel you know vulnerability is very important to me in everything in in my life and the way that I share on social media um but my podcast is where I feel safest to be vulnerable because I
(50:05) know that the people who are there choose to be there right on social media you can say things and anyone can happen upon it but your podcast people are there because they want to be there and there are really people that genuinely care about what you have to say so my podcast is really focused on very similar to the title of the podcast it’s really focused on inspiring you and empowering you to be your best in any area of your life and to overcome the struggles and the challenges and the road blocks and to learn to look for
(50:36) Silver Linings and gratitude and the shitty things that happen in your life like I really am am just so passionate about helping people understand that you’re not in control of everything in your life but you are in control of who you choose to be you’re in control of how you choose to think and the behaviors that you choose to participate in and I want to help women and men if they’re interested in my message take their personal power back and really learn to create the life that they want for themselves because I spent you know
(51:07) 30 years of my life my entire life that I can remember struggling with everything never feeling good enough never feeling satisfied never feeling happy and I I thought that this is just the way it’s going to be and when I started working on my mindset I began to realize actually I can create the future that I want for myself and I just want to show people you can control things in your life and if you choose to take the responsibility to control those things you can create outcomes in your life that will literally blow you away and
(51:36) you can live a life that is so freaking amazing but you have to take responsibility for that and and that’s my goal is to help people learn how to do that that’s so beautiful thank you for for sharing that and and thank you for continuing to do all of this work because it it’s I can’t say it enough you know for me it’s it’s it’s deeply personal on you know what you’re doing and and how you’re helping people and it’s a breath of fresh air to see the work that you’re doing to help people to
(52:04) overcome something that you’ve struggled with uh and overcome and and become a champion for um it’s it’s a powerful message and and and yeah the podcast is great if you want if if the audience out there wants to listen to that story and learn from somebody who’s not only been through it but helped many many many many people through uh struggles with uh with their relationship with food with coaching with uh um um and with building Brands listen to Jessica’s podcast the queen of pep talks and look for her on a
(52:34) stage near you as she starts her speaking journey and um I could tell you I I am I am both simultaneously have been thrilled and frustrated um because I’ve heard bits and pieces of of your speech never the whole thing and I’m waiting to hear the whole thing so I can’t wait to see you on stage someday soon um I feel the same way about you I’m dying to hear your entire speech because what I’ve heard is just fantastic thank you thank you your yours too and um and where can where can people find you if they are looking for
(53:02) you on on social media yeah so I’m on social media um join Jo iore jessore XO um primarily I’m on Instagram and then the podcast if you’re interested in really connecting with me and hearing more about my story and the way that I can help you in your life um the podcast the queen of pep talks is probably the best place to connect with me and really learn from me excellent we will get that all in the show notes Jessica this has been an absolute thrill to have you here I’m so grateful for your time and your
(53:33) energy and everything you do uh and to everyone out there thank you so much for joining us today I look forward to uh seeing you next time and uh we will talk to you soon thanks hey everyone Thanks for tuning in to the flow over fear podcast if you’d like to learn more about getting into flow and learn the foundations of flow I have a free video series on my website at at www.
(53:57) adamclick hill.com called the foundations of flow feel free to go there and download it and start your journey to Rising above fear and achieving greater flow in your life if you like this episode and I’m guessing you did if you stuck around for this long then please do me a favor and hit the Subscribe button and you will receive notifications when I have new interviews new Recaps and new trainings that pop up on YouTube thanks again for joining us