In this episode I talk to therapist Vicky Bellman, from Concentric Counselling and Fat Bubble, about protecting our kids from the weird diet culture things people say that can rupture their embodiment. I loved talking to Vicky last summer and knew the CIHAS fam would get so much from this conversation. It turns out you've also loved this conversation too, with Vicky's episode ranking as a CIHAS fave according to our podcast stats.
In this episode we discuss:
👉 The 'hot potato' of disordered eating and disembodiment that gets transmitted through families 👉 How to shut down body shaming conversations in their tracks 👉 How we can transmit healing back up the line, as well as protect our kids 👉 How every day that we protect our kids from diet culture is a day we are giving back to our younger selves 👉 Why body positivity and food neutrality are not the whole story
Laura: Hey and welcome to the Can I Have Another Snack?podcast where we talk about food, bodies, and identity, especially through the lens of parenting. I’m Laura Thomas, I’m a weight-inclusive registered nutritionist and I also write the Can I Have Another Snack? newsletter.
Today I’m talking to Vicky Bellman, who is a therapist working in online private practice at Concentric Counselling. She has particular areas of experience in trauma, and in working with disordered eating and eating disorders from a non diet, fat positive perspective. Vicky incorporates a social justice understanding and a heart for anti-oppressive practice into her work, understanding how political, systemic and structural influences inform us as individuals, and how we can develop empowered resistance.
So this episode originally ran almost exactly a year ago now and I wanted to pull it out of the archive for a couple of reasons. The first being that it’s a fan favourite; it’s one of the most downloaded episodes in the CIHAS archive. And secondly, it’s one of the most common questions I’m asked: how can I help protect my kids from diet culture?
So in this episode we talk about disembodiment and healing, how we can protect our kids from comments that might rupture the embodied relationship they have with food and their bodies, and how every day that we parent our kids without diet culture and body shame is a day we are giving back to our younger selves too. It’s such a great episode, even if you’ve heard it before, it’s worth another listen.
Just a little note that the audio is a little difficult to hear in places. Lucy has worked her magic but if you have any trouble and want to read along with the transcript then it’s available at canihaveanothersnack.com.
You can support the work we do here on the newsletter and podcast by forwarding this episode to a friend or a colleague who you think might get something from it and encourage them to subscribe to the newsletter at canihaveanothersnack.com. Alright team, Lucy and I will be back with a fresh ALL OF THE SNACKS episode in two weeks - until then, enjoy my conversation with Vicky Bellman.
Main Episode
Laura: Vicky, can you please start by telling us a bit about you and your work?
Vicky: Sure. So I work in private practice from my little garden studio here in Kent in the UK, and I work with clients around the world who are wanting to incorporate fat positive viewpoint into their therapeutic work. I'm a counsellor and I work predominantly with people who experience eating disorders or disordered eating. Often people who are in bigger bodies themselves.
I'm a fat woman and I think that that is a really important aspect of our work, that I have a lived experience and a viewpoint that centres a fat experience. It's what I know, personally and professionally. So that forms the, the real core.
Laura: And what brought you to this work in the first place?
Vicky: So, I did train as a chef. I was a chef.
Laura: I feel like I have that information stored somewhere deep in the back of my brain. Because like, it felt like it rang a bell. But then to, when you, to hear you say that now, it's like, oh yeah, of course. But I had forgotten.
Vicky Bellman
Vicky: Yes, it does occasionally come up. Yes, so I was a chef.
And I just long term for, for a few reasons just did not, couldn't make that work, didn't want to make it work and the kind of long hours…
Laura: It's such a tough career.
Vicky: Very tough career, physically and in terms of gender. As a woman in kitchens, and this was, you know, this was in the noughties. So it was not, it was not easy. I don't think it's particularly easy now either.
So I was thinking around what I wanted to do and saw an advert for counselling and I thought, oh my goodness, this is it. This links up with my – what we didn't call social justice back then, but do now – just wanting to make a contribution, a social contribution and being in community.
And so that was the start of it. And I was originally…predominantly worked in trauma therapy. So that's still a big part of my work and underpins all of my work in terms of making my work very safe, I hope, because that's at its core. And then eating disorder work really laid itself on top of the trauma work as a focus because of course there can be so much overlap and again it was an area of passion for me and an area that I really thought that I would have good insight, particularly again as a fat person, as fat people experiencing eating disorders. It's a very particular experience
Laura: Yeah, we recently did a we did like a movie club based on Your Fat Friend movie by Jeanie Finlay, which is just such a brilliant and moving story and just captured so brilliantly, in the sense that it's not pitying Aubrey in any way, which I think we tend to see portrayals of fatness on screen as being like, you know, falling into one of a very few genres and pity is, is a big one, I think. That's how we're meant to feel about the, the fat characters anyway.
But anyway, why I bring that up is because Aubrey talks about her experience with eating disorders in that film. And how, 1) she's not believed. And 2) when she seeks treatment out, it often reinforces the eating disorder simply because she lives in a, in a fat body and we think that in order to treat her eating disorder, that means shrink her body.
Vicky: Yes, absolutely. That's one of the parts that spoke to me as well when I went to see the film. Yeah, that is the experience of so many of my clients who either will not have recognised their own experiences of eating disorder because they've never conceptualised that eating disorder.
Laura: Or they're just told that it's binge eating disorder, right?
Vicky: Urgh! Yeah. Oh, God. Oh, God. Yes, absolutely. So that was a visceral response. Yes.
Laura: You felt that, didn't you?
Vicky: I sure did! Just a complete lack of awareness from systems and structures down to individuals of how central, restriction experiences within binge eating disorder. It is wild. It's just wild to me that we're still having to belabour that point.
Laura: It is so interesting in that you're reminding me of a conversation, conversations I've had with multiple fat clients where I am the first person who has said to them, you're not eating enough food. And they, like, laugh at me. They're like, what the fuck are you talking about? I'm a fat person. Of course I'm eating enough food.
And I'm like, of course, you know, that is what you have been told over and over and over again. And so I get that reaction and I'm telling you…
Vicky: Absolutely. And of course, you know, through your role, you're so able to say that. And it comes up within my work as well to say to clients, are you sure you're eating enough?
And it's not something anyone has ever said before. Because the only message they've received is: ‘you're eating too much’. And so that's so anti that understanding of what an eating disorder might look like. They just can't imagine themselves experiencing that.
Which is just so invalidating, of course, for clients in bigger bodies who experience eating disorders, they're either gonna never have been able to conceptualise it for themselves. Or they have an inkling that they might be experiencing an eating disorder, but they could never imagine safely going to a doctor and having that conversation.Or they go to a doctor, have that conversation and they're not believed. Or double down and told to lose weight.
Laura: I was gonna say, yeah. They walk out of there with a Slimming World prescription or like a referral for bariatrics or…
Vicky: Oh yeah. So there are multiple pathways for a fat person experiencing an eating disorder result in more harm rather than receiving care.
And that is so often the experience by the time a client gets to me. And they may have experienced it in other therapy settings, having their experience not recognised, even having it supported.
Laura: 100% I've, yeah, unfortunately heard of a lot of inappropriate advice from both therapists and nutritionists, dieticians that are, you know, effectively encouraging people to double down on their disordered eating behaviours because yeah, they're told that they need to lose weight and that's, that will ‘resolve their eating disorder’.
So I think we've established that weight loss is not the answer – surprise, surprise – to recovering when anyone has an eating disorder, despite that often being like, you know, the central kind of focus of the eating disorder or like the kind of the narrative, I suppose, of the eating disorder.
We've talked about how you do a lot of work to support people who have a difficult relationship with food and a difficult relationship with their body. And I'm wondering if we could speak to…what are the things that cause the ruptures?
In the relationship with food and our bodies in the first place, what are the biggest kind of causes or influences that you see in your practice that then may precipitate…whether it's a, you know, a clinically diagnosed eating disorder or just chronic dieting, chronic disordered eating, disembodiment, all of these things, these really painful experiences that people have.
Vicky: I think disembodiment is, is so key. You know, that kind of moment where your head just detaches from your body, too painful to stay attached. You know, the overwhelming answer that's in my head is that that is something that happens in childhood. It can happen later, but in my experience, that's rarely the case.
And I think the main answer is yes, it can come from peer interactions. It can come from being bullied or being labelled as fat as a negative thing from other children. But the pain that resonates and stays and gets talked about most often in my practice room is when it's come from adults. And it's come from trusted adults. It comes from parents, family members, teachers, religious leaders…
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