What Eats Us: Eating Disorders and Disordered Eating with Nancy King
On today's episode, master dietician Nancy King opens up our hearts to the complex world of healing, eating disorders, and disordered eating. She shows us the interplay between anxiety, life, circumstances, and physical origins of this mental health issue.
Referenced in the Show:
Nancy’s Bio:
Nancy is the founder of Your Life Nutrition. Having been in practice for over 25 years, Nancy is a nationally recognized pioneer and expert in eating disorder care and recovery. Nancy’s work with adolescents, teens and adults is focused on empowering individuals to experience unmistakable peace and health through eating well, movement, self-acceptance, self-expression and self-care. She is an avid volleyball player and hopes to someday, have her own dog. In the mean time she babysits her son’s dogs.
Nancy’s share: “When I go camping I love toasting my marshmallows. I really take my time getting the texture just right. I have another and another and another.”
Full Transcript:
Sarah Marshall, ND: Welcome to HEAL. On today's episode, master dietician Nancy King opens up our hearts to the complex world of healing, eating disorders, and disordered eating. She shows us the interplay between anxiety, life, circumstances, and physical origins of this mental health issue. I'm your host, Dr. Sarah Marshall. (music)
Nancy King
Sarah Marshall, ND: We have so many different things we could talk about this morning, which is very exciting, but you know why I thought of you in particular to be just an amazing contribution is, and I'm actually gonna probably miss quote it.
How many years have you been a dietician?
Nancy King: 30 plus.
Sarah Marshall, ND: Yeah, lots. You've got a (Nancy: lots! lots of years) good amount of amazing mastery and experience in that area. And I think, you know... yeah, I in natural health as a naturopath, you know, almost everybody, lots of people think I'm a nutritionist. That's like their first they're like, Oh, you're a doctor of nutrition.
I'm like among other things. Yes. That's a big thing.
Nancy King: Yeah.
Sarah Marshall, ND: And I think there's some really, interesting places where we could look at even the difference between like my understanding of nutrition as a medical intervention, a way to alter the biochemistry of the body using therapeutic diets. And then the work that you do as a dietician, of which I think I know what that is. And I bet there's lots of things I don't know about what that is. Yes. and you know, our relationship to food is a. I'm going to speak for myself, a complicated little nut to crack. Sometimes, you know, I, I use it to fuel my body. I use it to abuse my body. I use it to alleviate my emotions. I use it to crank up my emotions. I use it to hide from my emotions. I, you know, we use it to celebrate. We use it to acknowledge failure. We use it to acknowledge accomplishment. We, I mean, it's like...
Nancy King: yeah
Sarah Marshall, ND: It's in every nook and cranny of our lives, our psyche, you know, and then heaven forbid, we live in a family that eats one way.
We come home with a new diet plan and try and alter that inside of a family that's not interested in altering it and you know, it's like trying to move in cement. So I just think that going into more depth into the conversation about our relationship to food, to eating, to ourselves, to nourishment, to being nourished and with you and your life flow and the work that you do, and you're one of my heroes in the healthcare world. I hope to grow up and be like you someday. I practice. So thanks for that (inaudible)
on a fabulous
Nancy King: journey. That is for sure.
Sarah Marshall, ND: Good. So tell us a bit about you and what got you into it.
Nancy King: How did you even start in
Sarah Marshall, ND: this area.
Nancy King: Yeah. Well, I thought I was going to, my undergrad degree is in what was called ergonomics or exercise physiology is the most common application.
And I thought I wanted to be a physical therapist. What appealed to me was coming alongside an individual and looking at where are we? And what's possible. And taking it step by step and being a source of, perspective that they don't have because they're in the trees. And I'm looking at the trees and being a real source of encouragement.
And I really liked
Sarah Marshall, ND: that process
Nancy King: view of work. And then, towards the end of my undergrad work, I took a basic nutrition class. And then I, I took exercise physiology classes and saw the power of food on a cellular level and got so enthused about that. It occurred to me like, huh, I wonder if there's a thing, like a physical therapist, but a nutrition therapist.
And so I went to my TA for that basic nutrition class. I think it was
Sarah Marshall, ND: Nutrition 1A at UC Santa
Nancy King: Barbara. I mean, it doesn't get more basic than that. And I was telling her about my vision and she said, well, yeah, there's a thing called registered dietitians.
Sarah Marshall, ND: I'm like, "
Nancy King: WHAT?!"
Sarah Marshall, ND: and so she
Nancy King: said, I am one. And from then from there forward, I changed my grad school plans and switched over to getting a master's degree in nutrition, and then you do a year internship and sit for national boards, similar to, you know, other practices. And, still had the same vision of looking at where are we at and then being a source for that person of guidance and support and, like holding the space for their frustrations and their journeys and their flub ups and all of that. So, and then my mom and my sister were both psychotherapists in private practice. And so my vision was why could be doing that, but in a nutrition realm and certainly in a physical activity realm with the combination of the two degrees.
So from the get go, I pictured being in private practice an a strong interest in diabetes. And what I discovered early on was people deal with food like it's a problem for sure. And it's a problem with nutrition-sensitive conditions. It's also a solution with nutrition-sensitive conditions. And then I discovered people are like me, not following through on what they intended to eat that day and not happy with their body size and shape. And so I started, I mean, this was back, I mean, there were few diagnoses for eating disorders then, but it was not, anything like it is now there's certainly were very, very few resources. There were very few dietitians in private practice.
But I, I really had my vision. It was the perfect blend of like passion and naiveté, like I know what I want to do and I it's okay. That nobody else is doing it in my awareness.
Sarah Marshall, ND: Yeah. I had a bit of that too.
Nancy King: You did?
Sarah Marshall, ND: Oh yeah! (laughter) I mean, I had, (Nancy: inaudible) I had my mentor. Dr. Tom, you know, he, he was running a traditional clinical practice, you know, for me it was, it was the, cause almost all naturoopaths, naturopathic physicians are in private practice, but they have this set, like you walk into this office, there's a waiting room with six chairs in it. There's a table, there's two to four offices. They have this back room full of nutritional supplements. And like, I mean, it's like you go and a lot of chiropractors, you walk into all the offices, they look the same.
And like, I actually did start there. Yeah. And we did that for two years, invested $65,000 only to close the practice two years later and dissolve everything and take it apart. Right. And then my business partner, Tanda Cook ended up running a farm and she has people come out and sit on her back porch and drink a glass of wine and get in touch with who they are and ground into the earth.
And then does her naturopathic work, which is brilliant. And for me, it was going virtual. And, you know, I work with all my clients via video conferencing and I have since 2012, and at the time people were like, you can practice that way. There's no way, you know, and I'm like, it's time you took a blood pressure reading of your client.
And it was like, make or break the case. Right. And they have, and most of my people have a dozen, if not more practitioners and doctors in their lives. And so
Nancy King: somebody will be taking their blood pressure.
Sarah Marshall, ND: Somebody will be taking their blood pressure. It's going to get covered, you know, but yeah, I had that same, but it was like this naive place of like, I watched how my business coach ran her practice and she was making four times as much money as me working four days a week from a cell phone and a laptop.
And I had all this overhead going what am I doing? And so I, leap off the edge of said cliff, and figure out the way of how to do it on the way down and now, you know, with especially COVID and the pandemic and things shifting to telemedicine by sheer necessity.
Nancy King: Yeah.
Sarah Marshall, ND: My phone's been ringing off the hook with people going, so how do you do and what are you doing and how does it work? Yeah, totally.
Nancy King: It's so great that, that, like, I. Like you kind of didn't know any better, except you've followed your intuition, your soul, your heart, your calling. (Sarah: Yeah. Mmhmm.)
It's like, that appeals to me. I'm going after that. And yeah, that was so much, what I wanted was just, I had this a, a hunger for it. Just that desire. So I so grateful for that because here I am, 30 years later, continuing to love what I do.
Yeah. I just love being a registered dietician nutritionist, and the possibilities in the field are just, I mean, the breadth of what's possible is.
Sarah Marshall, ND: So talk about that a little bit more, like, what are some of the ground specifics of like the work that you do or,
Nancy King: yeah, so, I mean like most other fields, there's everything from journalism to being part of invention, like product invention, there's research, there's, you know, taking any of those things.
You know, from the court, so to speak, like that's a source of how do we invent things like necessity or, you know, participating in something and seeing a need, which I saw with eating disorder care cause it wasn't available for the most part in a private practice setting, yet people needed to be living their days, like going to school and going to work and. Still getting...
Sarah Marshall, ND: 'Cause at that point, there was, there was like inpatient care. You could go, you could go into a facility, but then you had to leave your life in order to get the treatment.
Nancy King: Yeah. By a lot. And there were very few of those kinds of centers and the approach to treatment, which you and I will talk about, was very different from what it is now. Like it's evolved in some really beautiful ways, treatment. On the court, what it looks like for the facet of nutrition therapy that I do, 'cause there's, you know, every nutrition-sensitive condition, somebody in our practice, your life nutrition has expertise or access to expertise in that area.
But my area is working with people dealing with disordered eating and eating disorders. And so the intention is when somebody first comes like they might come from a doctor, a therapist, a parent who knows somebody whom we've already worked with, people looking on the internet, hearing a podcast and a dietician being, in a podcast.
But the idea is when somebody comes to me, it's their opportunity for 90 minutes to share where they're coming from about like their relationship with food, their relationship with movement, their body, rest, like so many things that fall under the self-care umbrella, but largely when people start working with us, they don't look at things from that lens or through that lens.
They're not looking at a relationship with food. That sounds so strange. Like, yeah. I have a relationship with my dog, my family, my coworkers, but food it's inanimate. And as you pointed out already there it's complex. It's complex for a host of reasons, some biological, some, you know, sociological and some just the access or the lack of access to food.
And so it's really their time to, with guidance from me, they get to unpack all that and look at it, you know, like two sets of eyes in a nonjudgmental setting and see. Start looking at where do they have beliefs and practices and fears that aren't serving them. and then hope, you know, my commitment in that session is that they would come away having gotten something already of value, which could be an aha, which has potential, ahas have potential,
But they would hear something differently. They would say something differently about their story and how they arrived. Yeah. The third agenda point is that they come away from that session, really feeling listened to, heard, and understood, and that they would understand themselves better, that they also would have listened to themselves. And that begins the therapeutic relationship, not, not psychotherapeutic. (Sarah: yeah) because that is a distinct, practice. But to know, but in order to be able to practice nutrition therapy really well, I need to know what a psychotherapist does.
Sarah Marshall, ND: You know, and one of the nuggets, I want to point out in there because this comes up a lot with a lot of the practitioners I've had of all different fields on HEAL. And I experienced it in my practice, but we gloss over it. Like. Of course, it seems like it is important for a naturopathic doctor, a counselor, a coach, a dietician to listen and for you to feel heard. But my experience is that's actually a critical component of how we heal There's something to that. That actually that is almost a modality in and of itself.
It's not just about the relationship. Like yes, it does. It does establish relationship. It establishes trust. It establishes, you know, that connection between the practitioner and the person who's at work on their life, which even that I also have a theory that that relationship is as integral as a modality of healing as the therapies or the recommendations of the actions that you have someone do, but that, that that's actually critical the way that you listen and how you be with that person is where some of the unraveling can happen. And like, you know, there may be people on this, you know, they're listening to this, that you have the experience of this with yourself, where people just share things with you that they say they don't share with other people.
And they find themselves. I have people around me who say, I don't know why I'm telling you this. I don't tell anybody this. I can't remember the last time I talked about this, right? That I call it my clearing that happens in my space. That happens in my clearing. And I'm intentional about that, that I'm such a safe space and I'm also so neutral, like empty so that they can say anything and they're not going to experience even an energetic pushback of my opinion about that, or my thoughting about that. And it's tricky because as a practitioner, my brain is trained to be coming up with solutions, right? (Nancy: yes) So, it's actually personally, one of my approaches is I rarely give my treatment plans on the same session that I, you know, I do it after, because I separate those two places in my brain.
I don't want to be sitting there listening to them and then analyzing and coming up with solutions while they're talking, because I wouldn't really be listening. I would be doing those things. It does mean I have to structure my practice a little differently because I'm not going to like spit out a bunch of solutions.
And it's always funny. Cause I'll have people get on a call with me. And within the first 10 minutes, they're like, well, what should I do about that? And I'm like, I don't know, we haven't finished this session yet. We've got a whole world of things to talk about before I figure out where we're going to go with it.
Nancy King: I do the same. I mean, the expectation is set right upfront. You will not leave from the session with a plan.
Sarah Marshall, ND: Yeah.
Nancy King: It's, it's such an important time just to do all those other things and just to be. (Sarah: yeah) but that person just begin practice being with what their experience is. (Sarah: yeah) and then looking at, I mean, I may input some things like what difference do you begin to see, you know, in your relationships at home, if you weren't so driven by having to do this this way, you know, I may start a little bit of, you know, some carbonation, some bubbling up of ideas but I had never put it together that that's why we don't it's we just don't give a plan (Sarah: no) after the first session.
Sarah Marshall, ND: Yeah. I like, I let it, I mean, they will get one shortly, just not during, you know, not right then.
Nancy King: Yes.
Sarah Marshall, ND: Yeah, exactly.
Nancy King: Right. Well and I think you raised it really good point, Sarah, and that is that by the time someone seeks a practitioner for something, they've had it up to a certain level and are so, typically, so interested in what should I be doing? They might still be hesitant or fearful of making change, but they want answers right away and I so understand that. Yeah. I mean, that's, you know, if I go to a doctor with a certain condition, "What do you mean? I do a test in two weeks and then it takes another week to get ..."
Sarah Marshall, ND: right
Nancy King: now we're talking three weeks before I know the answers.
Sarah Marshall, ND: Right? I'm here now. I want to do this now. Yeah, I have. I actually, I'm going to totally tell one of myself and my clients are going to be like,"WHAT?" I have a trick for that.
So I, I actually find this, it's one of my key things in, what does it take to heal? And what does the healing process actually require is awareness, which is part of the listening. I'm doing the listening, I'm modeling that listening. And then they start listening to themselves in a new way. They hear them say, say things they didn't even realize were operating and going on behind the scenes.
But the other thing is, is, is just literally. If we were true, a hundred percent present state awareness in this area of our life, we probably wouldn't be dealing with the issues we're dealing with because like one of the coaches I worked under for a little while said, if you can just get somebody to smoke a cigarette completely present and aware and feel everything that it's doing in your body without numbing or ignoring it, you probably would quit.
Nancy King: Hmm.
Sarah Marshall, ND: And not everybody, but that's like, that's one of the things is like, when we really feel into certain experiences that are actually doing harm or damage to our body, there's definitely a part of us that's like, wait, what am I doing? And I mean, I can say that from a food standpoint, there are certain foods that I like, I mean, I was totally put it on. There's like when I eat pizza, And I've got it down to like I'll eat pizza about once a month. But pizza was one of my binge foods when I really was kind of more deep in the throws of managing my emotions through overeating and I would eat a whole large pepperoni pizza and then I'd hide the pizza box by walking it out to the dumpster in the apartment complex and putting it under something so that nobody I lived with would know that that's what I had been up to that night.
And so my heart rate would go up. And my stomach would start cramping and my brain went stop being able to really function quickly. It actually kind of like put me in this little comatose state, which I think was what I was actually going for was to like numb out. Right. Yeah. But it's interesting when you pay attention like that.
And so when I have somebody who comes into their first session and they're like kind of chomping at the bit and they're ready to be in action, the first thing I have them do is take a photograph of everything that they eat and drink and they have to text it to one of my special phone numbers for 14 days.
So they're sending me like five or six photos a day for two weeks. And usually people's jaw hit the ground when they're like, you're kidding me. And I'm like, no, I actually do. And I, and it's, again, it's not coming from a judgmental or analysis state it's coming from. I want them to pay attention, their awareness.
So it immediately puts them in action. It also gives me 14 days to do bunch of research and work behind the scenes. But I actually, I mean, I I've, it's been one of the more powerful. And then I continuing on and other areas where people will, if they use Fitbits or Apple watches or different ways of tracking their wellbeing, they'll send me screenshots of their reports in the morning, how their sleep was, you know, calculate how many hours of sleep they got.
They'll do it for measuring their water, measuring exercise. And like, I'll keep that game going for several months into the beginning of our work together, establishing them, paying attention where they hadn't been paying attention and then asking them, what do they discover about it?
Nancy King: Yeah. Yeah. And setting up that and continuing to nurture that non-judgment (Sarah: yep) context is essential (Sarah: Yep) for that to be part of healing. (Sarah: yeah) Because judgment tends to thwart healing, so that's (talking over eat other)
interesting. (both at the same time:) Oh, go ahead. (laughter)
Sarah Marshall, ND: You had said, we're going to get to this later and I want to make sure we do, which is like your approach to treatment.
Nancy King: Yeah. I think a powerful way to look at eating disorders, including disordered eating and what I mean by disordered eating is eating that is, occurring and experienced such that the individual's body and mind aren't being nourished in a way that's really life enhancing, that's really adding to vitality or providing vitality. So if we look at disordered eating, that's a, you know, a very gray zone. And most people are engaged in some of that, but it doesn't disrupt their life in, in any kind of, like daily limited experience way.
So if so then we're looking at, eating disorders, which the categories have expanded, but today I'm just gonna speak about, anorexia nervosa, bulemia nervosa and binge eating disorder. Those are all, they all fall in under, the realm of mental health or mental illness. And so just as a, a clarification, all clients that are working with the dietician and are dealing with an eating disorder, need to be working with a mental health professional.
Because the origin of that, even though it has physical manifestation, the origin of it is understood to be in the brain.
Sarah Marshall, ND: Yeah.
Nancy King: So that having been said, a way to look at it is that these are disorders coming from anxiety. It's important to note that anxiety feels different to different people.
Yes there are common experiences with anxiety. (Sarah: yeah) However, if you ask, your best friend, how do you feel nervous or anxious, they will probably come up with something physical as well as. Mental and emotional. And some people feel the anxiety in their gut. Some people feel it in their chest. Some people get headaches, some people feel tension, and there, I mean, there's just all kinds of ways to physically feel it.
So for people dealing with one of those three eating disorders or a combination of those, if we look at it through the lens of this, person's experiencing anxiety, it could also be depression, but we don't tolerate anxiety very well. And anxiety can come from emotions. Like you were sharing about using food to kind of ease and comfort some of your feelings.
There are all kinds of things that make us anxious or nervous. And so, part of the approach that's important to take is looking at how does food in and of itself make somebody anxious? (Sarah: yeah) While the therapist is working on the things in their life, like circumstances that are making them anxious, sometimes we have like, a psychiatric nurse or a psychiatrist looking at the chemical facets that are running, towards anxiety, also depression. And then certainly being, I would assert that being under one's body's home range, weight being above one's own body's natural home range or weight can also be a source anxiety that our bodies have.
I do believe our bodies have some kind of home range. I call it like a home address. It's really more like (Sarah laughs)
Sarah Marshall, ND: a block,
Nancy King: a block (Sarah laughs) yes exactly!
Sarah Marshall, ND: We've got some territory we can explore. And it's all in our home range. I love that. (Nancy: Yes!) it's not like one pinpointed number. That's (inaudible)
Nancy King: No it is not. Or if it was one number we would have like died out as a species.
Sarah Marshall, ND: Oh yeah, totally. It's actually amazing to me how resilient the human body is. Like what doesn't kill us. Like it's incredible, right? (Nancy: Yeah!) yeah. This thing's pretty magical. (Nancy: yeah) Which then works against us to some degree when the commitment is like weight loss or altering our body shape because actually our physiology is designed to to hold homeostasis very strongly to stay (Nancy: Yeah) where it is (Nancy: yes!) for the sake of survival. So you've got to play this game of kind of tricking the body to thinking that it's safe, but you can't drop into starvation. And like, you know, I mean, (Nancy: Yes!) I guess more of my clientele are in the realm of it's predominantly physical and there's less of the mental illness.
Although I have worked biochemically with people who've dealt with bulimia and anorexia. And at the same time they're working with other practitioners and I was one of their team members and have some experience with that. And what's interesting is like we found food sensitivities and food allergies, because what's interesting is, is.
And this is so histamine, which is a part of an allergy reaction, which comes from seasonal allergies to the environment. But it also comes from food allergies. You can have a high level of histamine in the body. Candida will also do this when those levels are high biochemically people experience the symptom of anxiety.
It's one of the things that happens when their body's dealing with that. It's really common. This is not like. This was rare, but I had one patient, early on in my practice where she had been diagnosed with anxiety at age of 9, she had experience of major anxiety since she was 4 or 5 years old and had always been dealt with that way.
And I did, I didn't do this on purpose. It was just, I always start my clients on an anti inflammatory diet. And one of the things we did was take gluten out of our diet, turns out. It was like a light switch. If she had gluten, she had anxiety. If she didn't have gluten, she didn't have any. And so in her, like late twenties, I think she was 28 or 29 when she came to me, we discovered that the predominant issue in her particular case was not mental/emotional. It was a reaction to a protein in most foods, processed foods, for sure. And then she became like this huge advocate and went on a rampage about gluten-free diets and like how important it is. And like, you know, she was like, I think she created a business around it eventually. And like, I mean, it was like, cause it was so life changing for her. Right? And that's just opened up that it can come from. There's lots of different windows we want to look into, this (inaudible)
Nancy King: Yes, for sure. So then we look at, you know, what are the foods that feel safe to them? It's all their interpretation and assuming that they're medically stable to work at the level of care we're in. (Sarah: Yeah) Which is a private practice. then. We began changing the relationship with food from what are things that, I mean, it's gosh, how do I succinctly say this whole process? I mean, it of course starts with how food plays a role in one's life and, and recognizing that food partially is experienced the way it is for them because of their biology, which also speaks to what you're talking about. like foods being calming, or actually restricting food and feeling kind of the, the fumes of adrenaline so to speak that can be calming. The idea of, you know, foregoing a meal, even though other people are quote, unquote, "giving in" to eating can give a sense of control, which can be calming. I mean, I heard a psychiatrist once, really terrific woman say, you know, human beings are control junkies. At our, lowest brain level. Yeah. We do want to control things. Fortunately we can grow and develop such the control isn't what we're going after we're going after taking risks and going after our dreams. But it's really, how does this person relate to food now? And some of it is, just being with the feelings that come up, being with the thoughts that come up. Some of it is, you know, inputting relevant facts. About how the body processes food, what's actually behind the abdominal wall with all the miraculous things the body can do to keep itself in homeostasis, which I call home with them. And then looking at physical activity, which can also ease anxiety, it can also ack up anxiety, especially if the body's not fueled for it.
Sarah Marshall, ND: Yeah.
Nancy King: And rediscovering a way to bring, I mean, for the most part, I would say people dealing with an eating disorder, their relationship to food does not have joy in it. (Sarah: Mmm) Wherever they are on the continuum of binge eating disorder, bulemia nervosa, anorexia nervosa. It's, there's not joy there. And typically if they're moving or if they're not moving it, there's no joy associated with it.
So some of it is, is doing a lot of work about how could joy find its way in here. What would that (Sarah: Mmm) be? And that's a, that's such a process. (Sarah: Yeah) Not just a "let me change my mind."
Sarah Marshall, ND: No, absolutely. I mean, that was, it's interesting, you know, I have familial history of mental illness and some eating disorder for different kinds of reasons. You know, there's so many different motivating factors and I think that's actually one of the myths is that like all eating disorders is just about people trying to control the way they look. And I mean my personal experience and the people around me and the people I've worked with in my clinic, that that's actually rarely, really the driving factor.
It's, it's way more, something else, internal controlling, uncontrollable circumstances like that. (Nancy: Yes) How we find our path back to joy, right? Like for me personally, I feel like I resisted that conversation probably until, I don't know, a few years ago.
Like, could I, I always put out there that I'm a recovering perfectionist and there was, I mean, there's still a lot of control mechanisms in my life that I am loosening the grip of, and bringing compassion into the space of, and all of that, but it was just like, and then there was just circumstances like between trying to run my own business and manage student loan debt that was like 10 times higher than any income I could ever imagine. And putting myself out into the world as a new doctor, like, Oh yeah, I totally know what I'm talking about. You should completely hire me. Whereas my internal state is like, you know, I'm a fraud and I didn't really do it and, you know, all of that stuff that comes up layered on top of: how well am I taking care of my wellbeing? Like for me, you know, if my sleep is off, my anxiety goes up. If my nutrition gets too far out of whack, my anxiety goes up. If I get dehydrated, my anxiety goes up like, you know, there was a point in time where I would wake up every morning. This was 2012, beginning of opening my consulting practice.
And then, through about 2015/16, I, every morning I'd wake up into at least two to three hours of suppressive anxiety, where it took so much commitment to take action at all into my day (Nancy: wow) to move my energy. And it literally was like fighting against a tide until about one or two o'clock in the afternoon, somehow I got enough momentum going that then I could ride that out for a while. And, you know, there were all these little places I discovered I could get an, a little bit of relief and sufficient sleep was one and hydration was another. And. You know, spending some time outside in the sunshine was another. Being in communication with people that I could just say, everything I was dealing with that became a huge one.
And it was like, I whittled it away. And then there was this emotional core of resistance and there's lots of versions of these. But my big one that I remember was if I had joy in my life, people wouldn't take me seriously. Like people who are happy. And laugh a lot and play are like frivolous and not, this was my, my brain's interpretation.
Right. And there was this whole association with if I was playful and joyful and filled with all of that, that people wouldn't think I was smart. And this went back to way deep in my childhood of being the younger daughter and I was very small for my age. I was the size of a 4-year-old when I was 6.
I was the size of a 6-year-old when I was 8. A family joke was I was two sizes too small. And so people would look at me and see somebody younger than I was. And they'd interact with me like a very small child when I had (Nancy: oh yeah) more capacity . So in me, I was constantly trying to prove how adult I was or how grown up I was or how, and it all came out as this like precocious kid.
But there was this ingrained pattern where if I looked playful and joyful and silly, they would just think I was younger than I was, which really hurt my ego. And I was not interested in that. And I wanted to be, you know, my sister's five years older than me, and I'm watching her getting to do things I can't do. (Nancy: oh yep)
It literally was like the perspective of an upset child. But here I am in my thirties, this upset 5-year-old, who's two sizes too small, and she wants to be like the big kids running my life and keeping joy out. So like, it can, it can come from so many places.
Nancy King: What do you... cause you distinguished, I think, joy from happiness, like I kind of heard joy and expression of joy is happiness and expression is play. An expression is like frivolous.
Sarah Marshall, ND: Yep.
Nancy King: That joy. Cause I see joy is integral to healing and an indicator of healing taking place.
Sarah Marshall, ND: that's a good one. Yeah. And what I'm actually like, it's funny. Cause I still realize I have those things kind of collapsed. And as you're asking me the question, I'm starting to look right now at my life, which is like, I also could see where my experience of joy happens in fulfillment.
Like there's a lot of places where like I'm satisfied or fulfilled, or I feel like I've accomplished something. You know, I'm a list maker. I love crossing things off my list and I get like little joy buttons out of crossing things off of my list. And so I can see that there's actually probably even right now in my life more work to do about, what are all the flavors and colors and facets and dynamics of joy, because I think I do still probably walk around with a fairly narrow view that joy and happiness and being silly, you know, are connected. I also do have an experience that there's a relaxation in joy, and that's one of the things that I also struggle with is like truly slowing down, truly letting myself do nothing. I remember I actually had a coach who said your assignment is to do frivolous things for no reason. And I almost crawled out of my skin. Like, you want me to what? And I had someone else who said, do you ever just call somebody just to like, shoot the shit for no reason? And I was like, no, why? Why would I do that?
And they were like, I don't know, because they're your friend and you want to like, hang out and talk to him. And I was like, Yeah, no, don't do that. Like, that was me in like 2014, like six years ago, you know? And, and now I can, I can call people and shoot the shit and talk about nothing. And like, (Nancy: ahhh) but it's these, I literally had to like grow the capacity and work through: what am I resisting?
And it was lots of stuff about that, that world of like being seen as smart being seen as capable being accomplished. Yeah. You know, we could get into all kinds. This isn't really like this. Like my psychoanalysis, my relationship with it all is all in the roots of my relationships to food. Cause that was one of the things I used was to manage that tension.
I would unwind the tension with, particularly for me, anything with gluten, wheat, and cheese. Those are my like go-tos. And, you know, some chocolate ice cream and red wine thrown in there, and you've got a full prostaglandin-inducing, inflammatory-inducing, cytokine-releasing, you know. Well and, I want to know what you think of..
Nancy King: There's some antioxidants in there, come on.
Sarah Marshall, ND: Totally right. What you hear, hear or think about this, but one of the things that I discovered in my food sensitivity work is often the foods we're addicted to, or we feel the most craving for, they actually do do some trauma in the body. And when there's trauma in the body, we release neurotransmitters that actually make us feel better for a period of time.
Like if, if you're dealing with true physical trauma, your body will actually have a whole mechanism of releasing cytokines and cortisol and adrenaline and endorphins, and even like opiate-type inducing experiences to survive the trauma, the idea is to like, get us through that threat. We can actually do that with food.
And the hard (Nancy: Yes) part is, is it works.
Nancy King: Yes. I mean, and that's where I'm I was speaking to part of it's biology. Part of it is environment . You know, and how we interpret the environment and all that. I do think, you know, it is a facet of self-harm sometimes, and that is not to say that it's always, I mean, I don't know that I would say what you described as I don't want to feel my feelings and so I'm gonna have pizza. I don't know that that is self-harm. However, it's...in a sense, it's squelching your, your beingness. Yeah. and yes, there's also part of, for some people dealing with the anorexia is some of the over-exercising, some of the food restriction is along the lines of what you're talking about.
Some of it is tied to I need to look to other people, people need to see me as struggling. And what they believe comes from being seen as I'm sick, or I'm not up to, you know, my fullness, my potential. but yeah, there are so many different reasons. And I think that self-harm really takes something to break out of cause it's very uncomfortable and it's not a place that in that part of the healing process, joy would be experienced it all. (Sarah: no) and at the same time, joy isn't being experienced, I would say with the self-harm, there may be a sense that comes with those neurotransmitters, sort of the opiate-type substances that get released, but it's being in these states are very self-limiting and they're joyless. And so part of recovery, part of healing, is looking for where in your life do you experience these freedoms or this sense of playfulness or, and it may not be germane to exactly what we're working on. but where do you, you know, looking also at what is your purpose? What are some purposes you have in your day?
Not just big picture life, that too, but a sense of purpose can be a source of joy. Relief is not joy. I'm not criticizing your checklists, but you know, like for me, I also like checklists, which is why I like Trello. (Sarah: uh-huh) I like checking it off and then (Sarah: yeah) having it disappear.
But it's, you know, it's that sense of relief now I've got that off my list. Yeah. And that's not the same as joy for me. I see there's a difference. And I think, yeah, it is an indicator of like healing and growth and having a sense of purpose. Being willing to be uncomfortable, like really uncomfortable and feeling the pain of emotions, the pain of limitations, and the fear of capacity, like, Oh my gosh, like I could be doing that. Oh, I don't know. I don't know if I want to do that. That seems scary. Risky.
Sarah Marshall, ND: What would you say?... like what do we not talk about around eating disorders? What's in the unsaid.
Nancy King: That individual is really suffering. Like I think for people that suffer from binge eating disorder, oftentimes not all times, but oftentimes they're in a larger body than the norm. And I mean, norm like. Not what's normal in a judgment way, but the norm, meaning what's common, most common. and that there's such weight stigma that so many cultures and continents have and, I think we don't talk enough about that the person is trying to make their way, just like every other human being. It's not a character issue. you know, it's not, are they worthy of love? Like their lovability indexes low it's none of those things it's, they're trying to deal with life just like somebody else's and there's.
If they are living in a larger body because of a binge eating disorder problem. and that is really clearly to say, not everybody in the larger body isn't at their home or has a binge eating problem. Their bodies come in all different shapes and sizes just to be sure that gets in there. Yeah. but if they are like, they're a human being. They are feeling frustrated and disappointed and just like anybody else's and they're suffering in the same with somebody who's, you know, we think we're looking at somebody who's dealing with anorexia nervosa, which also doesn't always show up in a really thin body. But there's, there's these judgments that we all have, I think it's also present in there, "I'm not racist" type of conversations that are so important in our country right now and around the world, versus, you know, against racism. These conversations need to be talked about more and I think the same goes with body size and shape. so I think those things aren't talked about enough just in an exploratory conversation. And that the other thing too, is that recovery healing, being healed, is possible. Like, yes, it's a journey. All of life is a journey, but in the same way, a broken leg, like a femur, you know, six, eight weeks in a cast, the bone itself is healed. Yes. You can see on an X Ray where the body provided extra calcium and knit it together, but, and then there's other work to be done to get back to a strong place.
But (Sarah: yeah) people would say that's healed. (Sarah: yeah)
Sarah Marshall, ND: We don't have anything about that. Like, and there's a really high expectation that it's going to go that way. Yes. Incredibly high. Yes. And yet the minute we get into biochemical diseases like anything like auto immune disease, certain cancers, like there's the actual assumption we're coming from is that the body won't be able to heal this. We have to add is suppressive, pharmaceutical or a heroic intervention just for you to even maintain life. And then the number of people that have just been told this is never going to be better than it is now. You will slowly deteriorate. We'll just try and keep you from deteriorating too fast. Whatever that means (laughs)
Nancy King: Right! You know, like the episode, with the gentlemen who dealt with epilepsy. (Sarah: Yeah) For a great deal of his adult life. I mean, he was able to find healing such that, I mean he rarely or never has seizures anymore. I think the other thing too, is some people won't heal by the time they die. And as weird as that sounds, I know you've thought that way about things that some people won't heal by the time they die,
Sarah Marshall, ND: Miight have to take it onto the next lifetime.
Nancy King: Yeah. And the healing process itself, can that be a worthy (Sarah: yeah) journey, even if something else is declining faster than other facets are healing and strengthening. And
Sarah Marshall, ND: Then that's where, you know, with all my clients, I always go to, what is the life you want to live? (What do) you want out of this life, it's not about me having some, you know, physiologic ideal and a set point. Not everybody wants to be able to run a marathon. Not everybody wants to be able to. You know, whatever, fill in the blank, but it, that, that's the point. You know, one of my favorites is to just ask the question, why health, why bother? Cause this is I'm gonna be like, I'm going to ask you to do a ton of things (Nancy: yeah!) and reorganize your life and rearrange your schedule and, and all kinds of things and take pills and drops and stuff multiple times a day.
Like this is going to be a giant pain in your ass. So like, why do it, why bother what's what would be worth it? And then we start to engage in that as a way to, to unwind, you know, what there is to do. And like, similarly, we come from different trainings to some degree, but I'm sure there's a lot of parallels in both of our practices about how we approach it.
Nancy King: Absolutely!
Sarah Marshall, ND: It's pretty cool. Yeah.
Nancy King: The whole treasure.
Sarah Marshall, ND: Well, Nancy there clearly could be like nine more podcasts. We can get into so many of these threads in more depth, but I just appreciate you being willing to, you know, open up into a subject that isn't... it's not one of our hot and sexy favorite disorders that we love talking about, and I think actually it's one that strikes close to home for probably the majority of people. There is different layers of our, you know, and I know there's different severity in terms of an actual diagnosis of an eating disorder versus disordered eating. But I think it's something that our culture has been dealing with and our relationship to ourselves, to nourishment, to joy. To how we feed ourselves physically, emotionally, spiritually is, out of resonance with who we really are as homo-sapiens at this point, so thank you for (Nancy: well said) shedding some light there.
Nancy King: Yeah, thank you. It's been, yeah, I feel joy right now.
Sarah Marshall, ND: Yay. It worked! We did our job! Fantastic. And then say the name of your business again,
Nancy King: Your Life Nutrition.
Sarah Marshall, ND: Awesome. So we'll have the links and information in the, in the show notes so people can get ahold of you and contact you or learn more about your world would be really awesome. Thanks for being an amazing resource. And thanks for being one of my heroes in the world of creating an incredible thriving practice that makes a difference for people.
Nancy King: Cool, Sarah. Thank you.
Sarah Marshall, ND: You bet. Alright. We'll see you next time. (music)
Thanks to today’s guest, Nancy King, for sharing her lifetime of experience, grace, and compassion. For a full transcript and all the resources for today's show, visit SarahMarshallND.com/podcast. You can learn more about finding your own healing by going to SarahMarshallND.com or following me on Instagram at @SarahMarshallND.Thanks for a music composer, Roddy Nikpour, and our editor, Kendra Vicken. We'll see you next time.