On this episode of the Food Junkies podcast, we bring you Clarissa’s BEST FRIEND from high school, Summer Innanen, to talk about all things body image, body neutrality, and healing from body dissatisfaction. Summer is the best-selling author of Body Image Remix, host of the podcast Eat The Rules, and creator of You, On Fire – an online group coaching program dedicated to helping people get free from body shame. She also co-runs the Body Image Coach Certification program helping anti-diet professionals learn to work with clients around body image.
Growing up, and in high school, Clarissa and Summer both had body image issues but Clarissa doesn’t remember talking about it or sharing any deep conversations about what they thought of themselves. After high school, we both began an unhealthy and disordered relationship with food where we struggled with weight, diets, and the societal pressures to be thin. Even at their thinnest they still hated our bodies.
Today Summer shares her personal journey to body image recovery and healing. She shares how body image develops, how diet trauma affects us, perfectionism, why we are always comparing ourselves to others, and how we must let go of the relentless pursuit of thinness and free ourselves by rejecting the rules and reclaiming our power. How changing the way you feel about your body isn’t actually about liking the way you look.
Clarissa and Summer have different stories of healing and recovery with food. While Clarissa’s includes being abstinent from addictive foods, Summer’s lead her to an intuitive eating approach where she stopped trying to makeover her plate and start making over what was going on inside her head. Just because we don’t eat the same way doesn’t mean we can’t heal the same way when it comes to transforming the way we see ourselves and igniting our hope, our power, and shifting our outlook on life. So in this episode, we don’t talk about the food, we talk about the thoughts and feelings about ourselves that often lead us to EAT THE DRUG FOODS to drown out the noise and numb out.
