Orthorexia, Healthy Eating Gone Bad with Jodie Pappas | S1E006

Linda Orsini: 00:00:00

Let me introduce you to Jodie Pappas. She's the founder and skincare chief of clean kiss a plant based Canadian skincare brand that I have used and have really enjoyed and loved. Jodie started the brand in 2014. And in 2016, received her certification in organic skincare formulation after realizing her business idea had wings Isn't that beautiful? Jodie completed her yoga teacher training in 2019. And then her Certified Nutritional esthetics practitioner designation in 2022. Over the decades as a mum to three young daughters, and as a type A entrepreneur, Jodie got more and more immersed in the wellness culture. And I think this is where I'd like to begin with you today. Jodie, what do you mean, you got so immersed in the wellness culture.

Jodie Pappas: 00:00:53

I mean, it happened over the years, right? It was a gradual, it was a gradual thing. But I think for myself, and for many people that are in the wellness space, it starts as a quest for knowledge, a quest for living a healthier life, not only for yourself, but for your family. And it, you can become very engrossed in all of the information that you're taking in. And while we live in such an incredible day, where we can get information so readily available at our fingertips, it can also be a little bit dangerous, because we can get information from sources that maybe aren't fully qualified or aren't seeing the full picture. And what I mean by that is, I was very easily influenced, as I thought more and more knowledge and information about health and about my body. I was very easily influenced by sources that maybe had a certain view that, you know, I'll give you an example. I was working with a personal trainer, I was trying to get my body into shape. And she told me to never eat bananas. Banana is a simple banana. Don't ever eat a banana. She said don't eat. They are, you know, too many carbs, too much sugar. You never going to lose weight if you eat a banana. So bananas. Banana again, so I've gone right. And then a doctor actually said to me don't eat any sweet fruit, too much sugar. Okay, off my list. Okay, don't eat anything that isn't organic. Okay, off my list. Don't eat meat off my list. You could see how there's a lot of don'ts. A lot of you know, some do's but a lot of don'ts in the wellness space, it can be very, very confusing. It can be misleading. It can be really hard to navigate. When you're getting all of this information, especially nowadays, we know social media can really I mean, there's a reason why they're called influencers. There's a reason why it's social media, right? It's not necessarily experts. In some cases, it is experts who are proliferating a certain viewpoint. So they're telling you, they could even be pushing their own agenda, maybe they've written a book. And so they're pushing an agenda that favors their philosophy that they've written about in their book as adults, and hopefully, we're our kids who are teens or in their 20s or you know, are older, we need to have that ability to be able to weed out proper information from misinformation. And that's quite frankly, what I fell victim to, through a series of events. It's partially because I was, you know, so open to receiving information that I wasn't using my own critical lens to be able to see what was real and what was false or what was realistic and what was not realistic. And so for me what ended up happening, Linda over a course of many, many years, as I went through different health challenges, or as my kids went through health challenges, I was searching for a way to help make my body be healthier and to be healthier. And so if somebody would suggest something like, well, a simple banana shouldn't exclude it from your life because that could be the secret. Then I would go Okay, I gotta I can live without bananas. That's fine. But then when you suddenly you know, as I did, I got to a point where my list of things that I excluded from My life basically became, you know, a no fun life. Because that's the scary path, that orthorexia can take you down or that's the scary path. But an eating disorder can take you down. And you know, it's it's funny because, you know, I'm now 51 years old. But when I was probably at my unhealthiest in terms of not loving my body, not not showing my body compassion, or kindness, or, you know, always trying to change my body, because I was fearful of all the things that I was reading about and hearing about, and I was fearful of aging. I was fearful about my body getting out of shape, I was fearful of disease and things. And that's how these things occur. Quite frankly, it just becomes overwhelming. That's what happened to me.

Linda Orsini: 00:05:57

So it led you down the path of orthorexia. It did. So what are the signs and symptoms that showed up? Like how did you I everything that you're saying really resonates with me as being in the wellness field too, and we can, when we're so conscientious of being healthy, we're really like sponges soaking up everything. And then of course, it can lead you down a slippery slope. So what did you find? Or your signs and symptoms? How did they show up in your life,

Jodie Pappas: 00:06:27

they showed up with heavy heavy duty restriction, I named a couple of the things that were you know, that were happening for me in terms of things that I was excluding, but that's not even touching, you know, the tip of the iceberg in terms of what I just described to you. I'll give you an example. I would very much live my life by a rulebook. So everything had to be very much, you know, very rigid, very prescriptive. So, you know, it would look like this, Linda, I would be laying on my yoga mat. And I would literally be laying on my mat in a time that were supposed to be, you know, focusing on the breath, focusing on body and the body sensations and being aware, right, my mind would not shut off, I was spiraling, I would lay there on my not literally spiraling about what I ate that day, when I was going to eat for the rest of the day, how much you know how many calories I had just burned? And, you know, was I working hard enough? And, you know, okay, if I didn't actually burn enough calories, based on what I plan to eat that day, what else can I do today, and I would literally plan my day and my life, around food around exercise around, you know, the calorie burn. And if I didn't do what I deemed to be an acceptable amount of, you know, restricting or moving my body, that I would feel guilty, I would feel shameful. And I would essentially punish myself by going into this next phase of restriction. So then the next day, like, I would literally plan out, okay, then I just had something that I would deem indulgent. Maybe it was a banana, like, seriously. And then I would plan to restrict what I was going to eat the next day, or I would do a double exercise. And I would literally plan my day like that. So yeah, that's one example, I would never be able to shut my mind off. And that's a classic sign and symptom of orthorexia. If you are spending the vast majority of your time we can, your waking hours, vast majority is thinking about food and your body and your body image, then you are in an unhealthy place. Because that's not what we should be spending our time doing. I'll give you some more examples. If I would have that one. Treat day where you know, say my husband and I were going out for dinner for a special location, we're going out for dinner, and I would make sure like, Okay, now I'm gonna really go oh, I'm just going to really enjoy. But what that would look like so you know, I'd have an appetizer, I'd have a main course they'd be I'd have a couple glasses of wine. And then I'd say, Okay, let's have dessert. And that to me felt like a guilty pleasure. Let's have dessert. Dessert can have dessert every day if you want. Like, don't save it for a special occasion. But I would save it. Okay. So if I say let's say we would share a desert so I'd have half a desert. I would lay awake all night, all night feeling this cycle of guilt and shame and berating myself for being weak for waiting myself for breaking my my restriction breaking down. I felt like it was a personal failure that you know, why would I do that? Why would I enjoy myself? Do I deserve pleasure? Why would I do that? Yeah, it was crazy how I would go through those those cycles in my mind. And, and you know, I would go out for dinners with girlfriends or you know, with couples and friends and I would see people, you know, my friends are just freely eating dessert. They're not sharing it, and they're not judging it, they're not questioning, you know, they would just say, I feel like dessert and they would order it, I couldn't do that, to me, I would have to give myself permission. To do that, it would have to have been something that I probably pre planned in my mind. To prep myself, I'm going to have dessert, I'm going to enjoy it. But I never really enjoyed it because the guilt and shame would follow.

Linda Orsini: 00:10:39

afterwards. It reminds me of Buddha, he always said the middle path like don't live in extremes. And I feel like orthorexia is an extreme place to be in your body and mind. I know I restricted food groups for many years, and now I've softened that much more mindful, but we can be our own worst enemies for sure. And I know when you're in that place, you can't see it. What was the call for love? How, how did you recognize this?

Jodie Pappas: 00:11:11

Well, if there was a couple things that happen, so there was a couple of defining moments, couple catalysts to my to my healing. One of them. It was this day, my husband and I went to a friend's ski chalet for the day. And we were there skiing. And you know, the apprai ski is just as fun as the skiing portion. Right. So everybody's in the chalet. Everybody's having a couple drinks, and then they're having food. So there's pizza, and there's like little sandwiches, and there's burgers and fries and potato chips, and people are eating all this stuff. And I'm absolutely starving. After a day of skiing, I'm finished. But I refuse to eat any of that. I refuse to put any of that in my body. out of principle. I would rather wait. The waiting turned into waiting, oh gosh, I probably waited 10 hours to eat. I went way too long without food. Like, as humans, you know, we can't we can't go that long. I deprived myself so badly that day that I was so ill, I was so sick. I was physically, you know, I was vomiting. I was just really unwell. And to the point that I actually convinced myself, I must have caught a flu. I didn't think it was anything that was self induced. So that happened. And that was scary. I thought wow. Like that's what if I become but I didn't see that right away. Like that took me months to be able to reflect back on that. What actually happened? What actually kind of kicked me in the behind was I was doing the keto diet, which so many people are doing, not only right now because it's the new year and everybody sets these lofty goals. But it's been a trend for years. Right. As we know, the keto diet was originally designed for people who were epileptic. It was a way to manage epilepsy, but it has now become a way for people to lose drastic amounts of weight in a short amount of time. I was doing the keto diet. I was meeting a couple of friends for lunch one day. I'm not a candidate for the keto diet, as many women are not if you suffer from low blood sugar, low blood pressure, you know adrenal overload, which you know, your body your your adrenal glands are just on constant overload as many women suffer from especially if you're Peri menopausal. menopausal postmenopausal. Like these often are counter indications for doing the ketogenic diet, by the way, so I felt always awful. When I was doing this diet. I was lightheaded, like to the point where I was almost passing out. But I kept doing it because, you know, I couldn't eat till noon, because that's, you know, I had this eating window, and I would deprive myself of eating. And so I showed up at this lunch with a couple of girlfriends this one day, and I was really off. Mentally I was off physically, I was off. And this one friend looks at me and says, What are you doing? Are you okay? And I was like, I was miserable as all you know what? And like, I was just beyond like, I wasn't myself, I really wasn't myself. My personality was drastically altered. My mental health was suffering from doing all of this. And I told her what I was doing and she said, You need to eat but you need to eat some carbs. Like there's things going on with you. Of course, you know, that kind of opened my eyes and then she started subtly sending me different links to different articles about the quote unquote wellness diet, which was sweeping The Nation which was sweeping the world and how a lot of people were going to these extremes, such as I was with suffering from orthorexia. It was the first time that I had really heard that language, orthorexia. It was the first time I had heard this wellness diet was not always a healthy thing. And that it was, you know, a very slippery slope for so many people. And that opened my eyes. And I was like, Well, that can't be me. Like, full on denial. That can't be me. I'm just really healthy. And I'm very disciplined. You know, like total type a behavior. Well, that's not me, like us, other people that have that have a problem. But it was me 100%, I had to, I had to have that mirror held up to me in a gentle loving way, with somebody showing me the kindness and the compassion that I couldn't show to myself. And you know, even my family didn't see it. Like my kids saw it. My husband saw it, but they saw it coming over 1020 years. So, so gradual, I was disciplined, right. And people, people praise that discipline. And this, people praise weight loss, we tend to see somebody that's gone through a weight loss regimen, and we say, Wow, you look fabulous. What are you doing?

Linda Orsini: 00:16:20

You shouldn't, especially as a woman, I think, really advice.

Jodie Pappas: 00:16:24

We shouldn't be doing that, that perpetuates this type of disordered eating. We praise discipline. So Oh, you're so good. You never eat dessert. And you always look so great. And you always are so good about exercising. We're praising the wrong things. Yeah. Right. So absolutely should be praising people loving their bodies. We should be praising, showing compassion. Listen to your body. You don't feel like exercising today, because you're tired. Great. Take a rest day, take a day off. Focus on your mind. Don't always worry about what's happening on the physical body. Where are we praising the mental, the mental health? Where are we praising the emotional body, and the emotions that get so lost and so stuck up and what's happening on this physical body? It was lost. For me, it was so lost, Linda.

Linda Orsini: 00:17:25

It's so funny. You say that, because I gave up gluten for quite a while I still avoid it. But it's not completely out of my diet. And so if I'm having some kind of gluten product food, my son will say, Oh, it's a cheat day. And I'm like, wow, I don't know if I like that terminology a cheat day. Yeah. So it's so interesting that even over a capillary about the whole way we eat and function, but it is certainly mindfulness and awareness, noticing what feels good for your body. Because really, what's good for me one day might not be good two years later.

Jodie Pappas: 00:18:05

Right? Right. And you know, what you just said is so everywhere in our society, if I go to the gym, and I do an exercise class, I will hear especially around the holidays, especially around Thanksgiving, Easter, where people do tend to be more indulgent. Because you know, it's a festive time, I will hear the fitness instructor say, you know, work extra hard today to, you know, burn off that Easter Bunny, or that chocolate, you're gonna eat at Valentine's or it'll work extra hard, or thank god, you're here because you're going to eat it later. And I just cringe now, like, now I'm hypersensitive. And I think I don't want to be part of that problem. I want to actually be educating women, especially women, I want to be educating young women from teenage years that you do not have to earn your food, you do not have to burn off your food, you do not need permission to eat, you do not need permission to take a rest day. Food and movement are mutually exclusive. They are not related. Food should be used as fuel, to fuel your movement. But it is not you earn the food, you don't earn the food by moving your body. You eat the food, because your body needs that fuel and that love that only, you know, we can get from food, and it's tied into so many emotions. So as you can see, I get very lit up and I get very passionate about this. And this is part of the work that I'm starting to do as I'm studying to be now also a holistic nutritionist, because I want to be able to help women to be able to understand this emotional component where if you are finding that you are constantly going and you're opening that pantry and you're stuffing your face with you know food Whatever it is a stop and ask yourself, what are you actually hungry for? Do you need a hug? Do you need love? Do you need words of affirmation? Do you need to just have time with a girlfriend to share your your thoughts and your emotions? Do you need to go sit and meditate? Do you need to journal, all the healing arts that you teach Linda like, that's what I want people to understand that there's something else going on there. Because if you're always using food, to soothe you, to soothe your emotions, there's something else there that you're missing. And that's what I'd rather have people understand that to never feel that guilt. So if you are using food, try to detach that guilt cycle. But instead ask yourself some of those questions about what else it is that you need.

Linda Orsini: 00:20:53

Yeah, I think that's so beautifully said. Because sometimes eating can be emotional. And it's really about loving the skin we're in. It's about knowing that our bodies are the shell is is who we are inside. And we really need to, to feel that. Right? Like when I die, I don't want people say, Well, she was so disciplined that God, she never ate dessert. Oh, that's not what we want. As humans,

Jodie Pappas: 00:21:24

we want people to say, Wow, she was kind, she was compassionate. She was gentle. She was giving, she was generous. All the things that we want to embody, nobody's gonna say she never ate the cheesecake. While she integrate the birthday cake, she was so disciplined she never eat gluten. like nobody's gonna say that nobody cares. It's so true.

Linda Orsini: 00:21:46

It's so true. So I love that you really noticed that. And, and that's a really great example. Because if we are really close to people, it's an act of of love and kindness to maybe bring it up very kindly and gently. And that's what a true friend is. But of course, we have to be willing to hear it. And so it has to be very gently,

Jodie Pappas: 00:22:10

right? It it absolutely does, that could have gone poorly. For my girlfriend who brought that up to me, I could have become very defensive. And I could have, it could have hurt the friendship. So yes, it has to be done in a delicate, loving way. When this was starting to become a reality for me, I started I'm a reader. So I started buying books. I started listening to podcasts, I went to therapy, to me, I had to surround myself then with the education to say, Okay, what is this? What does it look like? How did I get here? And now how do I get myself out of this?

Linda Orsini: 00:22:48

Those are beautiful questions. Jodie

Jodie Pappas: 00:22:50

Right, I had to do a lot of soul searching.

Linda Orsini: 00:22:53

And, you know, it's really important to know that we don't have to go it alone. We can receive support along the way. So that was, I love that that is such a beautiful call for self love, and for self support, like support on your journey. And of course, I know your family would be so supportive. So how are you living your best life now?

Jodie Pappas: 00:23:16

I have to be honest, that every day, I believe it's very much living with orthorexia. And being on my healing journey, it's still an everyday struggle. So you know, I speak of it as though it's in the past. It's not I have to very much be mindful of how I show my body and my mind, love and compassion every single day. And so that's the first thing that I that I need to share is that it's there's no beginning and ending point. And I hear this a lot from the community that I'm a part of, you know, with people that are on their healing journey from eating disorders, whether it be anorexia, bulimia, or you know, orthorexia binge purge disorder, there's so many eating disorders, and they're really misunderstood, quite frankly, orthorexia in particular, is misunderstood, because if you look like a healthy person, people say, Well, you don't have an eating disorder, you're fine. We tend to think of people that are anorexic, who are very, very thin, and have very little, you know, body fat, or we tend to think of overweight people who you know, struggle with their weight and maybe are doing that binge purge thing.

Linda Orsini: 00:24:29

So visual, if you can see if it's, if it's very visual, it's apparent, but then we don't know if we look at the average person really what's going on in their mind.

Jodie Pappas: 00:24:40

Right? And it can be very, very difficult to detect. But back to your question, what does my life look like now? And how am I living my best life? I have to have a lot of reminders that I'm worthy. I'm enough. You know, I can eat I can eat whatever my heart feels like. So you know, what is my body asking? For, detach it from the amount of exercise and activity I'm going to do that day, I'm still very planful on how I move my body every day, because I love moving my body. So whether it be you know, I'm going to do yoga today, or I'm going to do Pilates, or I'm going to go to spin class or middle, you know, I'm going to do some weight training, whatever it is, or I'm just outside walking in nature, you know, beautiful sunny day, definitely do that. Whatever it is, I'm very mindful about moving my body, but there is no attachment to food. So that's number one. That's how I make sure that I keep myself in check, when I start to feel those emotions that go. So hand in hand with being disordered in my thoughts around food, I have to really check myself, I will do a meditation. I will. I personally love guided meditations. So whether it be you know, doing yours, or doing something to guide myself through something that is talking about showing myself self love, loving kindness, you know, there's some really great resources to help me get through those rough days. But meditation is definitely 100% In my plans every single day, like I just have to do it. To me, it just is a game changer for my mind.

Linda Orsini: 00:26:19

But meditation is is exercise for the mind. So if orthorexia is initiated from the mind, then meditation is such a beautiful practice to help relieve that, or to be noticed it and how to move through it. Absolutely. This has been so informative. Jodi, I just love this conversation. And I think it's one that many girlfriends can have even friends of all gender, of course, as they go through their journey, because I feel like this podcast, many of the listeners are into wellness because they are trying to live their best life. They're trying to really notice where they are. So how can they maybe reach out to you? Or what can they do to move forward on their path?

Jodie Pappas: 00:27:04

There's a couple of ways that you can find me so on Instagram, so I'm Jody Pappas. I'm also soma and soul nutrition is my new holistic nutrition coaching business, you can find me there on both Instagram and Facebook, you can also find me at clean kiss lifestyle, which is my original baby, formulating natural skincare, as you mentioned in the intro, so that's where people can find me. But I also have an offer that I want to share with everyone today if I can. Great. Sounds great. Yeah. So I would love to give everyone a discount of 20%. From this podcast, if you want to purchase natural skincare products. That's the best way to show your body some self love by you know, putting only clean products on your body, because that's the first and foremost way to show yourself an act of kindness. So you can save 20% with the code, eight c f l 20. So that's the code. Additionally, if you go to Soma underscore soul nutrition on Instagram, go to the link in the bio book a 15 minute consultation with me. And we can talk about any of your skin concerns. We can talk about disordered eating, if you want help getting back on your path. We can talk about nutrition, we can talk about anything from this podcast that resonated with you, I would love to do that and to do one on one consultations. And that's what really actually lights me up as being able to help other women with any of the challenges that we talked about today.

Linda Orsini: 00:28:39

And especially as we're aging, yes, so especially I

Jodie Pappas: 00:28:43

love talking with women that are kind of 35 plus, where they're starting to feel the struggles of aging, feeling the struggles of body image, feeling the struggles about that, you know, the changes that they're going through, because so much of it is so intertwined, right between the things we've been talking about our mindset, how we move our body, what we put on our body, what we put in our body. Those are all the things that I love to talk about, because that's we all want to age with grace and longevity is the number one goal that we all have. Right. But to do it in a healthy way, without orthorexia without a slippery slope,

Linda Orsini: 00:29:21

right. Healthy mindful eating. Yeah, yeah. Well, thank you for joining today. I feel like it was a beautiful call for self love, noticing what we're putting in our minds and bodies. And I'm so grateful you shared this time with us today. Jodie

Jodie Pappas: 00:29:37

Oh, thank you, Linda for having me. I'm so honored to be your first podcast guest

Linda Orsini: 00:29:42

I know. This is so exciting. Beautiful. Thank you so much. And all the list of everything you said will be in the show notes.