Diet Culture & Food anxiety with Elle Mace

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We are back for series 17, and our guest today is a dear friend of ours, Elle Mace.

Elle is an ILM Level 5 Coach and Mentor, a Master Practitioner in eating disorders, obesity and body dysmorphia, a nutrition and weight management therapist, and a life and positive psychology coach.

Elle says she's "always been passionate about health and fitness,” but for years, that passion sat alongside an unhealthy relationship with food that started when she was just ten years old. She's spent the years since learning to free herself from what she calls her "food demons," and falling back in love with her body.

That journey is now a book, Food Freedom: How to Find Peace from Food Anxiety and Reclaim Your Body Confidence, an empowering guide for women rebuilding their relationship with food, body image and self-worth. Grounded in positive psychology and Elle's own experience as a qualified Eating Disorders Practitioner, it looks at how diet culture harms all of us, the different faces of disordered eating, and how to trade self-criticism for self-compassion. The book is brilliant, we went along to her book launch, where Elle spoke about her own journey and the power of positive psychology, and we knew you would want to hear this conversation.

We chat about how Food Freedom actually came about, and what it was like for Elle writing it, digging back into her own story, including the book's subtitle, How to Find Peace from Food Anxiety and Reclaim Your Body Confidence.

Elle takes us into her chapter on Body Dysmorphia and seeing yourself clearly, timed with the first ever Body Dysmorphia Disorder Awareness Day, unpacking what BDD actually is and what it isn't. We talk about diet culture and where "healthy eating" tips into disordered thinking, including whether something like fasting can become disordered when taken too seriously, especially with so many conflicting expert opinions out there. Elle also opens up about swapping self-criticism for self-compassion, including how she came to name her own inner critic, and shares tips for anyone struggling with theirs. We can't ignore what's happening right now with GLP-1s either, so we ask Elle, someone who has spent years untangling this stuff, what she makes of a moment where women are shrinking and even Hollywood stars are starting to look frail rather than "healthy." She tells us the one thing she wishes someone had said to ten-year-old her, and shares the smallest first step she'd want anyone to take today if they recognise themselves in her story.

We also chat about our summer, there's a new Weekly Invitation, and stick around for some beautiful inspiration to carry you through the week.

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