Mental Health Support on an Intuitive Eating Journey with Rebecca Barrett-Wallis, MA, RP, CCC

Episode 065 – The Intuitively You Podcast

Mental Health and Intuitive Eating 

Let’s be honest, being on an intuitive eating journey can feel hard and overwhelming at times.    Taking care of your mental health while on an intuitive eating journey is beyond important. And that’s exactly what we’re diving into in this episode – mental health and intuitive eating. 

Below you will find tangible concepts, tips, and tools for you to support your mental health while you’re working on improving your relationship with food. 

Please note: This episode and the accompanying tips are not a replacement for therapy. This is for educational purposes only. Use your best discretion of what’s right, or not right, for you as you learn here. Be sure to reach out for support from a therapist, trusted loved one, friend, support person, etc. as you need! 

Our Guest – Rebecca Barrett-Wallis of Work in Progress

Our guest, Rebecca Barrett-Wallis, MA, RP, CCC, is a Registered Psychotherapist, Clinical Counsellor, and the owner and founder of Work in Progress, a mental health collective in Toronto, Ontario. Rebecca completed her MA in Counselling Psychology from the University of British Columbia and has written and contributed to research papers in the field of psychology and mental health. 

Rebecca believes that thinking of ourselves as ‘works in progress’ is essential for our growth, evolution, learning and unlearning, to making mistakes, and knowing that we will be ever-evolving as we walk through life. In her work with clients she takes an anti-oppressive, trauma-informed and client-centred approach, working predominantly with individuals experiencing anxiety, depression, trauma, and self-criticism.

What does Being a ‘Work in Progress’ Mean? 

Thinking of ourselves as “works in progress” is essential. It’s something that is necessary for growth, allows us to change our minds, helps to keep us accountable to learning and unlearning, to making mistakes, to taking it slow, and being ever-evolving in our lives. 

In therapy, there is sometimes a misconception that you “graduate” or that your therapist will give you a “ok we are done here” statement of being “finished.” It’s so common to want this in a society where most of us grew up with gratification from completing things like grades, trophies, job interviews, etc. 

Being a work in progress means we can shift, grow, and evolve. And is a great mindset and outlook to embody while on a journey to improve your relationship with food. In the rest of this post, we’re going to dive into the 5 key pillars of being a work in progress. Let’s get into it! 

5 Ways to Support Your Mental Health on an Intuitive Eating Journey

Cultivate Self-Trust 

Self-trust is closely associated with intuition. Self-trust can be tricky to build. Iit can be hard enough to trust others, let alone ourselves. It’s really all about following your instincts without the noise, listening to your body’s cues, reminding yourself that you can trust your body even if you make a mistake, or what feels like a mistake. 

We have been taught through countless means (diet culture I’m looking at you) to ignore our body’s instincts. Something our guest, Rebecca truly believes is that it’s really important to reflect on who this benefits and who this oppresses. 

Capitalism and the weight loss/diet/wellness industry relies on us believing that we are not good enough in order to make money. We are up against a systematic form of body-shaming that comes at us through our phones, tv screens, advertisements etc. all aimed at selling something. Unlearning these things and cultivating self-trust can be so powerful! 

How to Practice This: 

• Either journal, record yourself, or discuss with a friend the following questions:
  • Think about a time when you trusted yourself. 
  • What did you do as a result of your instinct/intuition?
  • And how did it go? 

Foster Self-Compassion

Self-Compassion is different from the all too commodified idea of “self-care.” Self-compassion encapsulates how we treat, talk-to, accept, and generally like ourselves.

If you’re here reading this, you have likely been taught to want to lose weight (or perhaps maintain a thin ideal) your entire life, so it is not surprising that you may have developed some anger towards your body when your efforts have inevitably fallen short. When we hate ourselves, or a part of ourselves, this is likely to foster an internally hostile environment. 

Self-compassion intervenes in this process by saying, “Hey, what about befriending me instead of criticizing me, I’m hurting.” Interventions aimed at developing self-compassion are really where we can improve how we treat and talk to ourselves.

How to Practice This: 

• First, notice your inner critic – try out drawing it or giving it a name
• Then, we can work to quiet it down with kindness 
• It might be helpful to imagine yourself as kid, how would we talk to a friend, etc.

Tap into Meaning

Meaning all about is tapping into your values and what makes you truly happy. It’s about finding meaning in places outside of our external attributes (i.e. what we look like, what we own); and do things, not because they are “insta worthy,” but because they feel good.  

If we can label our values authentically, then we may be able to live a life that represents these values more fully. Figuring out what you value, and making small shifts to incorporate them without needing to apologize for changing things up is crucial.

How to Practice This: 

• Complete a values exercise. Here are a couple of Rebecca’s favourite options:
  • Brene Brown’s Values Exercise
  • Russ Harris’s ACT Values Exercise
• Write them down somewhere that you can easily refer back to and remind yourself of.

Practice Mindfulness 

If you have “tried” mindfulness before and thought there was something wrong with you (maybe you thought “but I can’t seem to silence my thoughts!”) this is because you might have been misinformed about what mindfulness is. Mindfulness really is noticing the present moment without judgment.

We so often get caught up in imagining negative outcomes that we lose track of what is going on in the here and now. We can experience anxiety because we are imagining a future threat or past shame (i.e. weight gain). 

But mindfulness asks you to consider if that threat is really as big and scary as your imagination would have you believe. You can do this by taking a brief moment to notice only what we know to be true in the present moment (not labeling it as good or bad). 

How to Practice This: 

• Set a reminder on your phone, or use a sound from your environment, or an action  to cue practicing mindfulness by:
  • Doing a body scan – start at your head and work your way down
  • Look for anything that feels stuck or areas of discomfort and just notice them.
  • Ask them: “What do you need?”

Be Patient 

Patience is so tricky especially in the pace of the world we live in. Everything is at our fingertips, we no longer do well with “boredom,” and are oversaturated with information.

So many of the meaningful things we do in life take time. Also as humans, we have a built in negativity bias. Meaning that our brain has this tendency to be velcro for the negative things and ignore the positives. This could also really contribute to a lack of patience because we are almost expecting the negative even when we put in time, hard work, energy, and so on. And ther becomes this lack of motivation to be patient. 

How to Practice This: 

• Practice “Taking in the Good” – an exercise from Rick Hanson’s book Hardwiring Happiness:
  • Let positive facts in your life become positive experiences.
  • Savor the positive experience for 10-20-30 seconds. Try to let it fill your body, and be as intense as possible.

Links from this Episode on Mental Health and Intuitive Eating: 

Work in Progress Links: 

• Work in Progress Website: workinprogressto.ca
• Connect with Rebecca & Work in Progress in Instagram: @workinprogressto
• Work in Progress Booking Site: workinprogress.janeapp.com

Resources Mentioned in this Episode: 

• Brene Brown’s Values Exercise: brenebrown.com/resources/living-into-our-values
• Russ Harris’s ACT Values Exercise: actmindfully.com.au/values_checklist_russ_harris.pdf 
• Hardwiring Happiness Book: rickhanson.com/writings/books/hardwiring-happiness

The Intuitive Nutritionist Links: 

• Apply to join the Embodied Food Freedom group coaching program right here:  theintuitivenutritionist.com/eff
• Live in Ontario? Check out our 1:1 Nutrition Counselling Services (Ontario clients only): theintuitivenutritionist.com/toronto-intuitive-eating-dietitian
• Connect with Jenn on Instagram: @the.intuitive.nutritionist
• Show Notes: theintuitivenutritionist.com/podcast

If you’re enjoying the Intuitively You Podcast, please be sure to leave a rating or review! This helps us spread these important messages to more lovely humans. Grateful for you, keep on living intuitively you!

This episode is a collaborative conversation with Rebecca Barrett-Wallis, MA, RP, CCC, of Work in Progress (workinprogressto.ca), and Jenn Baswick, RD, MHSc, host of the Intuitively You Podcast.