Episode 15 - Diet Culture & Christianity: Jill Gentry Part I

Food, mind, body coach Jill Gentry shares her story of healing from disordered eating and unpacks diet culture within Christianity. This is part 1 of 3 in this series.

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Transcript

Hello, welcome to Barely Christian, Fully Christian. This is Anni Ponder. This podcast explores loving Jesus, being repulsed by much of Christianity, and relating to the Holy Spirit as the divine feminine, or as I prefer to call her, Mama God.

On today’s episode, Diet Culture & Christianity, I talk with food, mind, body coach Jill Gentry. She shares about her journey healing from disordered eating and also uncovers how pervasive diet culture is within the Christian community. This is the first episode in our series, with at least two more to come. Glad your’e here.

Well, welcome, Jill. I am so glad to have you here on Barely Christian, Fully Christian. Thank you so much for being here.

Yeah, thank you for having me.

Just so the whole world gets a moment to understand who you are and the wonderful work you are doing in this world, I'll introduce you by way of two ways that I know you. One, Jill Gentry is a dear friend of mine. And two, aside from many things in this world, she is a food, mind, body coach. And I will let you unpack what that means for us because that's new for many people, I think.

Yeah. Yes, a food, mind, body coach concentrates as a life coach on our relationship with food, our relationship with body, and also incorporating mindset work. I'm also an intuitive eating counselor, which we'll get into a little bit later, which will be really fun. But as an intuitive eating counselor, I help men and women in their relationship with food and body to awaken their intuition because for most of us, it has been asleep or some of us just dead. And so I get to through body work and incorporating quite a few principles, learn how to awaken their intuition and to start trusting their body and their intuition.

Okay, that is fascinating. I haven't heard you put it in those terms before, or it hasn't grabbed me before right now. But I'm sure you know, I am so interested in intuition and finding ways to heighten my awareness of my own body's wisdom and what I know without knowing in the traditional sense and so I am really excited to dive into this. So you use a term that is new to me and I'm sure will be new to many people coming across this podcast. When I asked you okay well how do you frame what the goal is because you said in one conversation I actually don't use the words health and wellness the way you hear a lot of people talk about it I was like okay wow there's a lot there. You said well then what are you aiming for what's the goal and you said food and body freedom so what does that even mean?

Yeah I'm glad you brought up health and wellness because I think that health and wellness is very ambiguous and hard to attain and can feel overwhelming for a variety of people and also just even in language like what does health mean? What does wellness mean? And that can differentiate between you and me and anybody else listening. So I love the term or phrase food and body freedom. So essentially, living in food and body freedom would mean that we are free from rules, which end up controlling our everyday lives. But not just ending there. It's free from the idea that our worthiness is encapsulated as a human, that we would be dependent upon what we eat or how our body even appears to the world. So that we are then free and independent of cultural oppression, perhaps our own trauma, maybe the way we were raised, that we can live in some acceptance and awareness and understanding that our relationship with food and how our body appears in the world doesn't depend on our human experience of worthiness.

Wow, there is so much right there. There's like a whole treasure box of things that I want to pull out gems and turn around and have you talk about. And so here's what I will let our listeners know. Jill and I have at least three podcasts planned, because this is a huge topic. And there's much to say. And so we're going to address this from three different places at the very least. And so if there's something that comes up and you're listening and you're like, Oh, my goodness, that's a whole other thing, let us know. And we'll try and work that into a future podcast so that we don't drop threads that are really important to folks. So well, I think as I was thinking about how's the best way to enter into this, I would love it, Jill, if you would share your story, which I've heard you call food and and body freedom when prayer isn't working.

So would you just give us an intro? How did you come into this world of thinking and intuiting in a new way? And how did that work for you? Yeah, yeah, I love that title, I guess you could call it. So I grew up in a Christian home.

We would go and do the church thing on Sundays and often on Wednesdays. And as I became a little bit more aware, going through puberty, kind of the middle school age, onto high school, just became more aware of my body and the size that it was in this world.

I'm 5 '10", so I've always been taller in a very athletic body, which doesn't fit well when we are in a culturally oppressive world that says skinny is healthy. So I was aware of that. I was also aware that my parents did the yo -yo dieting, they would try anywhere from, I remember Richard Simmons, Sweatin' to the Oldies, Slim Fast Shakes, to Adkins Bars, to I remember seeing a South Beach diet, cookbook, low carb, keto stuff, like all of that was a part of what was modeled and mirrored to me growing up.

Although I didn't participate in dieting as a teenager or young adult, I did start to realize, hmm, after I had my babies, I have three kids, and each time I put on a lot of weight and was really uncomfortable.

And I remember some fear mongering from my OBs and the doctors of, oh my gosh, yeah, you can't gain this much weight while you're in pregnancy, it could lead to diabetes, rather than instructing me on ways in which I could support my nutrition, ways in which I could support my baby growing in my body, and also my body.

And that perhaps the weight gain wasn't the end all be all in pregnancy. So after each baby, I fell deeper into insecurity in my body, as I started to gain even more weight, and so would continually gain weight after each pregnancy, I decided, oh, well, I know, I'll just do a quick diet, I'll drop the weight, and then it'll be off for good.

Well, what I quickly realized is the crash course, restrictive food diet actually leads to weight gain long term. Not just that, because inherently weight loss and weight gain has no morality on it. We as a culture have put morality on weight loss or weight gain. What it was doing was it was changing what's called, and we can get into it later, my weight step point theory. It was affecting my organs. Our body was never created to drop 40 to 50 pounds and then within a one to two year period gain 60 back.

And so we're asking our body to do these but wasn't supposed to. And so we even look at cardiology patients and we ask them, oh, you're at a weight that is not acceptable for your body size or height.

And we use BMI, body mass index, as a meter. And so then we ask them to lose weight and then they'll gain it right back because they have no tools. And that I just knew. Lose all the weight, but I had no tools because I thought it was strictly calories in calories out or nutrition alone I had no concept of a relationship with my body or a relationship with food and how to build that hmm, so from my dieting experiences I began to Fall deeper into my body insecurity and also shame and guilt spiraling of gosh What's wrong with me?

Like why am I the one that can't figure out this whole weight loss thing and keep it off? Meanwhile, I would spend if I wasn't dieting I would spend my afternoons binge eating so binge eating is eating in an uncontrollable fashion for hours on end and and that was secrecy for me.

I would eat like in my kitchen pantry so my kids couldn't see I Would take food and go on a walk. So my family couldn't see me eating it. Lots of ways that I would finagle eating so I could continue on the binge. At that point I had no idea it was called binge eating I thought that was for the sick and someone else. So as I Believe that the modeling and the mirroring of diet was stored in my body and it was a safety go-to It was really an unsafe mechanism in my life.

So that I continued the binging Then I would in quotes I'd fall off the wagon and I need to jump back on as a term that a lot of dieters used. That was me and it was a term that I thought oh Monday, I'm gonna start again. I'm gonna just eat a low-carb meal. I'm gonna eat tons of veggies and protein. And I would encourage my brain in that way, still not having tools, but just trying to white knuckle my way through it. And ended in what I would call an explosion.

So if you think about a soda bottle, and you shake it up, shake it up, shake it up. That's what dieting feels like. It's pressure, pressure, pressure, pressure, and all of a sudden, I can't do it anymore. Twist off the bottle cap. And we know what happens. It's a big mess. So that's the cycle I lived in for a couple decades of binging, feeling horrible about myself, not sharing this with anyone, living in the secrecy.

And then oh my goodness, I subconsciously felt unsafe. So dieting was my, was my safety. So then I would try yet another one. It was Metafast, which is now Optavia, it's a soy based diet that's just so terrible for us anyway. I tried noom three or four times because I'm like noom will save me. There's a psychological component. But I had to count my calories every day. And I had to weigh myself on the scale every day.

And so then I did my fitness pals. So like, oh, if I ate a cheeseburger and fries, and I needed to go run three miles to counter that. So everything about the system I was functioning in was a false safety.

That actually led me to more harm than supportive in my nutrition, and especially in my intuition. So I remember feeling really desperate and alone. And in my desperation and loneliness, I remember doing noom one last time.

I'm like, this is it. This is going to work. I'm going to pay for it again. And I dropped so much money on diets. And so I'm going to pay for noom again. And this is what's really going to work this time.

And I believed it. I believed it really was going to work. But they never worked. So why this time? And I remember just praying and desperately like I was on my knees, Lord, you've got to help me. Like this is what I know. This is all I know. And it works for everybody else, but not me. Little did I know it actually didn't work for everybody else but me. And I remember being so angry. And I threw my phone. Because noom had an association to calorie counting for me.

And I was like, no more. I am no longer going to do a restrictive diet. I'm not going to restrict my food. I'm not counting my calories. I'm not going to step on a scale every day. None of this is working for me.

But then the scariness is then what? Yeah, what am I gonna do? So a friend of of mine told me about this neuroscientist named Caroline Leaf. And so, and he did not know I was suffering with my relationship and food and body.

He was just sharing about his own trauma healing process. And so I thought, I'm just gonna go check out her podcast. And she had this woman on, and the title of the podcast was Conquer Binge Eating. And I remember thinking, oh, is that what I've been doing? Like, have I really been binge eating? And so I listened to who became my coach, Jessie. I listened to her share about her own struggles. And I'm like, oh my gosh, it's scary. And as hard as it was, I had answers.

Like, I was like, that's what I'm doing. And she... It has a podcast, her podcast is called the Dear Body podcast, which I highly recommend. And I started in quotes, no pun intended, binging on her podcast.

And I remember the very first one, and she asked a lot of questions, and it was like she was talking to just me. And I just at that point said, I'm going to share my struggle, I'm going to be really honest and vulnerable and open, and I'm going to hire her. And so that I did. And I remember I was meeting in this women's group, and I within that week told them, this is the pattern I've been living in. Does anybody else resonate? And it was crickets. Nobody resonated with me.

And I had read, wait a minute, one in every four women suffers from what's called disordered eating, which is different than an eating disorder. An eating disorder is found in the DSM manual. Not that I adhere to that, but it's a way to detect what an eating disorder is.

And disordered eating is a suffering in your relationship with food that's outside of the DSM. So I thought, oh my gosh, I have disordered eating. And nobody else here does. Okay. This even feels more alone.

And I can't even identify with it. So I didn't share it with them much longer and ended up hiring my coach. And she started to unpack and share all the tools that worked for her. And she healed very quickly in her relationship with food and body.

And guess what? I was not the only one. She offered a group coaching program where I met 30 or 40 women, delightful humans, and And we split up into groups and we were able to share our suffering. And finally, I was like, what? You get me. You live in secrecy. You dieted like me. You struggled with binge eating. You hid your food from your kids. And it was the most refreshing, hard journey I have ever encountered in my life.

Because it was women who were willing to walk with me. There's something powerful in group coaching, which is what I offer as well. Because there is power when we can come together in our pain and vulnerably share and be heard and be known.

That alone will help us heal. Practically speaking, I was given tools and this is a term I use with my clients. Let's get out of our head and into our body. And that is what started to heal me, one huge component of.

What would it look like when I have this urge, I call it urge surfing. Can I serve the urge and get out of my head and stop trying to outthink my brain and my emotions, but start to feel the emotions that are showing up in my body and stay with them and maybe go for a walk, maybe do some jumping jacks, maybe do some breath work.

And so that slowly began my healing journey. If I could show up for myself, get out of my head and into my body on repeat every day, and I trusted my coach, could this actually heal my binge eating? And it did six weeks later.

I remember thinking, I didn't even have an urge to binge. What? I just went a couple of afternoons without binging. I went from lunch, maybe having a snack or something, and I could just fix dinner and not eat everything before dinner and feel over full before dinner, still eat dinner, and then over stuff myself because I would tell myself, you can have dessert once you have dinner. That's another beautiful, unfortunately ugly phrase we use in our culture. And so four years later, I haven't suffered and struggled with binge eating.

Wow.

Yeah, that to me is my journey of healing in my relationship with food. What comes later is our relationship with body. So often we heal first in our relationship with food, and then it's like, oh, there's my relationship with my body, and they're integrated. We can't have one without the other.

I've heard you say, it's not like alcohol where if you realize you have difficulty with alcohol, you can just abstain. We can't just abstain from food. So we have to maybe approach this in a different way, although it makes me wonder if your approach here is also useful for alcohol, but I don't know anything about that, so. You know, what strikes me, of course, listening to your story, is the power of vulnerability and tenacity that when you first decided to be vulnerable in that group, and either no one could relate, or my suspicion is more that they didn't know how to say that they did relate. They didn't know if they had the courage to say, oh, I suffer with that too. You didn't stop, there was something driving you internally to press forward, keep reaching out, and find your healing. That's just really beautiful. I'm just always so in awe of what vulnerability has to offer us when we say yes to it.

Yeah, I would also say, naturally, I'm fairly vulnerable. I do appreciate that. I believe vulnerability breeds connection. And I know that if I am going to live in connection with other humans, then vulnerability is a definite asset.

Yeah, something I've always loved about you.

Well, thanks.

Well, with that underlying, so now we kind of understand a little bit of how you came to this, I want to bring this to, you know, the second point that I often come to here on my podcast is my frustration, actually, it's a stronger word than that I use repulsed I'm repulsed by how Christianity ends up showing up in our world. And I've heard you talk a lot about Christianity and diet culture. And so let's unpack that and see what we can learn and how we can begin to unlearn all the ways diet culture has seeped into and permeated so many aspects of Christianity.

Yes, whoo, this is near and dear and yeah, my heart can start racing when I even think about it. It's pervasive. Diet culture is no different in the church than it is outside of the church. And diet culture is a $78 billion business that preys upon our insecurities. It comes in forms of restrictive dieting that we've talked about. It can come in the form of detoxing language around clean eating. Diet culture can look like swimsuit season, hot girl summer, language we use, diet culture is deeply ingrained within us in language. We'll use words with our kids like, no choose a healthier option when most kids don't actually know what that even really means.

Diet culture has made its way for me personally into the church through fasting. We assume that fasting is just a great spiritual discipline for all people in the church and unfortunately it's been weaponized and also there's a lack of education and forewarning with how this how fasting can actually harm us when we are suffering from disordered eating or an eating disorder and that was me. I was, I couldn't wait for Lent season to come around often because I thought, I'm going to fast. I'm going to take out coffee and chocolate, or I'm going to do no carbs, or I'm going to not eat any kind of sweets because I'm, every time I have the urge, I'm just going to think about God.

But the underlying principle that I was actually functioning out of was, I wonder what the scale is going to say on Easter morning. And then it's going to be like my cheat day. I say that in quotes because on Easter then I just get to eat anything I want.

And I engaged in those kinds of diets too. You do six days on and one day off. Like that is terrible for our internal system and what we're asking of our body. It's so harmful. So for me, I think that the church has done a huge disservice in educating and having a stronger empathy and understanding for those that suffer with disordered eating or an eating disorder.

So just very briefly, 35% of all food restrictive diets lead to a diagnosable eating disorder. And so when we don't have awareness of this within the church, we think fasting is harmless. But when we can fast, we can lose weight, which means we can control ourselves. So if any of us have any trauma from childhood that was out of our control, often we find it in controlling our food intake or bulimia, releasing the food from within us.

And I just want to take a moment with that statistic alone. Statistics can be helpful and they can be tricky. But for me, just thinking about a third of, can you say that again, 35% of

Food restrictive restrictive diets lead to a diagnosable eating disorder.

So in over a third of humans' experience with, I'm going to cut out whatever it is, sugar or dairy or whatever, I'm doing this for whatever reason, a third of people doing that experience that directly leading to an eating disorder, did I hear that correctly?

Okay, so to clarify, a restrictive diet that is centered around weight loss, consciously or subconsciously, not every diet is used as a weight loss tool, but it can be hidden in our subconscious.

That is just huge. I'm just sitting with that like, wow, the damage. And let me just say this for anyone else who, maybe this is your first encounter with this kind of thinking about food and body. If you are feeling like, oh my goodness, wait, what? I had no idea, this is enormous and your thoughts are swirling right now with, uh-oh, am I standing on quicksand right now? Let me just tell you, I had that experience too. And it's not unlike when I first started learning about my white privilege in this country. And I had an inkling that I needed to learn a little thing and then that led to another thing. And then my education has just never stopped and it probably never will, as I've uncovered my internalized white supremacy, what, you know, the waters that I swim in and it's been a huge thing.

So I just wanted to mention, if anybody is right now listening here to you, Jill, and going, wait, hold on, what? This could be problematic. This might not actually be in our best interest. I had no idea. I thought this was all really good. I thought I was being so healthy. Let me just say, I know, and it is, I will say, understanding diet culture is showing up for me all over the place. I had no idea how pervasive this is, how permeated my thought life has been with diet culture, which as you have pointed out, Jill, is a 78 billion with a capital B dollar industry. And we learned, you and I learned in one of our conversations that Christians spend more money on diets than supporting mission work, right? Right. And so, wow, let's just take a moment and realize the waters we are swimming in have been completely tainted, and it's going to take a lot of listening and learning and openness here.

And if you're feeling your heart racing, mine has been, too, for a long time and we can press in I'm gonna borrow from our dear friend Glennon Doyle and remind us we can do hard things we're going to do this together and that's why Jill and I are gonna do at least three episodes here so we can begin to learn a better way to be with food and body. So I just wanted to put that out there in case anybody is flaring up right now going wait what I had no idea, this is too hard never mind. It is hard and it's a really good journey and I'm glad you're here so please don't go away.

Yeah and I agree with you Anni, once we start seeing diet culture we can't unsee diet culture it is so hard to unsee. I've shared this with you Anni but we were at a a church not too long ago where a pastor the Sunday after New Year's Day, a few years back, stood up on the stage and said, wow, you all look so good. Your diets must be working. And in the profession I'm in, I was beyond angry. I was thinking, we're no different. We have pastors leading us into supporting diet culture. And if we think about some statistics, I'll use them, but yes, please take them lightly.

Let's say 75% of women suffer from disorder eating, around 50% of men do. And then in our own town, the teenage girls that I have recently been working with, the conversation that's moving about the school is how much can we starve ourselves? And the competition with comparison. So a lunchtime conversation might look like, hey, did you eat breakfast? No, I didn't either. Okay, awesome. What's your 100 calorie pack lunch gonna be? So, and then these kids are going into athletics after school and exerting an enormous amount of energy and calories that they need nutrition for.

So while the pastor was communicating this joy, false joy that he was excited about, there was a family that had two girls that were sitting there that had been suffering from anorexia. And there's an eating disorder called orthorexia. It's the obsession with health, which 89% of dieticians have orthorexia.

Wow.

We just have to be careful who the professionals we go see. But there was a family that was sitting there and that's what they were fed at church. And here they are suffering with severe eating disorders in their home. There might be some of your listeners that knew of Gwen Shamblin down in Tennessee, and she had what's called the Weigh Down Workshop.

And her whole premise was that you can just pray and follow her spiritual guidelines, and you will lose weight. She ended up dying in a horrible helicopter crash. And there's a great documentary on her and who she was as a pastor down there, and how she led people astray deeply through this belief system that dieting and God were integrated fiercely.

And lots of resentment, because now these people are in a body that they never wanted and believed what Gwen Shamblin preached on Sundays, and most of it was around dieting.

You know, it reminds me of the purity culture that you and I survived largely in the 90s, but it's still pervasive in places today. And how at the time we thought this was the very best way to be to honor God and our bodies and our future spouses, and the hordes of people that are coming out now with this harmed me in ways I am only beginning to unpack. It's very, it's evoking the same sort of response in my body right now, just what we have done and preached and said and sold in the name of, oh, if you love Jesus, this is the right way to be, that has literally cost lives. We are not talking about theoretical things here. I mean, when we talk about people with actual eating disorders, we know that costs lives of children, teens, adults. And so we're speaking of life and death here. So I'm feeling totally activated now. Great.

Yeah. Yeah, I'm glad you're activated, and I hope your listeners are too, because that's the energy that propels us into this freedom that we're actually created to live out of. And so if there is an activation of that energy, don't suppress it, don't hide it. Let's not pretend it doesn't exist. Like we should be mad. What I tell my clients all the time when they come back in session, they're like, I am so angry at this billboard I saw. I am so furious with my uncle who just came back in with wanting this trophy of like, I didn't eat all day, which so many people in the workforce will say, no, I just couldn't stop to eat. I just, I decided I wasn't going to eat until I came home from dinner, which is just an excuse to binge.

And we think that that link which is appropriate, and that there's something to attain to like, oh, here's your starvation trophy for the day, and it's really sick. And then our kids hear the language and then believe that that is trusting information.

Oh my goodness, I wish there were a program where I could download this into my mind right now because as you're speaking, I'm like, oh, I say that. Quite frequently, I say, oh, I forgot to eat today. I'm like, oh, silly me, isn't that goofy. What am I teaching my daughters? Okay, I just, I'm here with a notepad and pencil and I wanna learn as quickly as I can and as deeply also so that it's not just a flash in the pan but I wanna learn a whole new way of, this whole new way of thinking about food and body.

Well, it's so beautiful how God created our bodies, truly. We were created with these biological cues. So if you think about, if you have to use the bathroom, your body is actually communicating to you. Your brain isn't the only part of you saying, Anni, go use the bathroom. Your body is actually like, oh, I feel a fullness in my bladder. Oh, there's some pressure. And we don't even now, we don't consciously have to walk our brain through that system. We've just been trained from a young age. This is what it feels like. So now you go to the bathroom and there's a place that you go for that. And eating is the same way at birth. We were created with an alive thriving intuition and the baby started to cry and would find the mama's nipple. We're a mammal. We're no different than a goat or a cow figuring this out. We are mammals and we know how to find our mom's nipple. But the problem is we intervene. We live in a fast paced culture. We live in so much fear. We don't want to wait for the baby to just naturally find its mama's nipple. We want to force it, figure it out. And I'm not demonizing bottle fed babies. I'm not demonizing any of that. I am just speaking for the natural creation of our systems.

Yeah. And the suppression of our own intuition.

Yes. So then the interventions come. And so the baby learns at birth, oh, don't trust my intuition. I can't find the nipple. Somebody has to bring me to the nipple. And so then from that early time, we then have suppressed our intuition and we don't trust it, which means we don't trust our body. And so our bodies become really scary for us.

So, is that part of what I've heard you talk about when you say why we've been kept stuck? Is that where it starts?

I think it definitely can be. I think medical interventions are not helpful at times. I'm grateful for them when I get a broken leg and I need someone to fix it. But there are times where it isn't helpful and we just need to trust that the body is going to do what the body was created to do. So, yes, I think it can start there. Feeling stuck in our body can come under the realm of multiple ways. Trauma is definitely one. Emotional suppression. When we are biologically created to be 5 '10", my size, and the weight that I'm supposed to be at, which I don't weigh myself, so I don't even know what I weigh.

Those things keep us stuck because we're constantly trying to fix ourselves rather than fearlessly accept ourselves. So when we start to accept, wait, this is the size of my body that I'm gonna live in, kind of what you alluded to, Anni, as much as we can't abstain from food, we can't abstain from living in our body while we're walking this earth.

And so what would it look like to start accepting our body? What would it look like when the big emotion comes and we start to feel the feeling? What would it look like if we took that huge leap and decided I'm not gonna live in the stuck cyclical patterns of diet culture, thinking that weight loss is the ultimate?

And not that I demonize weight loss, I think there's a place and there's a very gentle approach as a life coach, not intuitive eating counselor, but as a life coach, I will walk my clients through. As an intuitive eating counselor, we walk through 10 principles and we awaken and enliven this intuition.

So I think there's a combination of multiple things that keep us stuck. But if there's a pattern that we're living in that isn't bringing us to unstuck, it's probably keeping us stuck. So the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again, expecting different results.

So the reality is, what's 1% shift? So James Clear in Atomic Habit says, what's one small shift, just 1% that we can make today that would tweak our everyday patterns so we're not in an insanity cycle?

So for me, it was like, okay, the first step, I'm gonna actually engage in the podcast. Okay, the next step, I'm gonna listen to the next one. The next step, I'm going to accept that this is me, that I suffer from disordered eating.

My next step, I'm gonna go tell someone. So it was like 10 steps before I even reached out and hired my very first coach. Yeah, and I love bringing people from a place of stuck to unstuck. Mm hmm. Whatever that might be. It doesn't take a lot, but it takes commitment to self and a willingness to show up every day, regardless if you're on the train, on the wagon, off it or not.

Yes, yes. And what I keep coming back to, what keeps coming to me actually rather is the message that sensitivity is a gift, opening up to welcoming emotions without judgment as much as possible. Oh, I feel resistance. Hello, resistance. I feel nervousness, hello nervousness, and very gently allowing myself to have these feelings as I'm like also feeling daunted. Wait, I didn't even know I was swimming in the pool of diet culture and here we are learning brand new ways to think and approach our lives. Hello to feeling like a fish out of water or whatever metaphor comes up. All right, the good news is I'm not alone. There are plenty of folks experiencing this and so thankful Jill for you agreeing to doing this together. I'll be honest, it's probably 90% for my own healing and then 10% if anybody else listening wants to come along for the journey.

Well, thanks for being honest about where you're at and then desiring to heal.

Yeah, absolutely.

Because it does affect generations like you said with your girls.

It does, it does, I know they have, I've been careful to model loving myself and one of them said to me recently, at Mama, I'm so glad we weren't raised to hate our bodies. And I went, oh, yes, thank you, that came through. I'm so glad because I know the culture we're in and we are not invited to love our bodies because otherwise the diet culture mass machine would fall on its face and so that was a point of celebration and also I'm like, oh, I know they're going to have their own work to do unpacking all the ways this came through me without me knowing or trying and all I can do now is do my best to heal myself, address the disordered eating that I certainly have and offer them some freedom. So thank you for...for sharing your light and your story. It's a real gift Jill. It's a real gift. Thank you. Yeah. All right. So we will see you again on the next episode where we'll get in a little deeper.

And in the meantime, I'll put this out. If anybody listening wants to write in and has specific questions, I'll route those to Jill so that we can either address them on the podcast or I'd be happy to be a channel for some information there some way.

So if people have specific questions about any of this, please reach out connect at AnniPonder.com. And Jill, how can folks find you if they're like, oh, she does coaching. I want to sign up. How can they get ahold of you?

Yeah, so JillGentryLifeCoaching.com or they can find me on Facebook or Instagram at JillGentryLifeCoaching.

Right. And if you're in touch with me already, you can always get ahold of me and I'll put you in touch with Jill if you don't wanna go on Instagram or Facebook or couldn't spell, but it is J -I -L -L -G -E -N -T -R -Y, lifecoaching .com.

Okay, fantastic. All right, well, we'll sign off for episode, I don't remember what episode of the podcast this is, but our first of at least three, and we'll come back and dive in some more the next time.

Thanks so much for joining us.

Yeah, thanks for having me, Anni.

Okay, bye. Bye.

Thanks so much for joining me today. If you’d like to get ahold of me for any reason, you can find me at barelychristianfullychristian.com. I’d love to hear your thoughts about this particular topic or anything else that’s on your mind and heart.

The artwork for Barely Christian, Fully Christian was lovingly created by Lauren Leith of Little Moon Market. You can find her on Instagram if you'd like a beautiful moon of your own. This gorgeous song by Wyn Doran and Paul Craig is called “Banks of Massachusetts.” Enjoy.