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Denise:
Hey, everybody. I’m so excited today because we have a special guest with Victoria, and I’ve known her for a couple of years and I wanted her to share her experience with pregnancy, food and weight struggles. And what’s going to be super fun is she has two kiddos. So we’re going to be talking about her experience with her first pregnancy when she didn’t know the work of food recovery and then her second pregnancy when she did.
So I just wanted to welcome Victoria. Welcome. Thank you so much for being here.
Victoria:
Yeah, this is exciting. It’s cool that I get to say I’m the first guest on your podcast.
Denise:
You are, so to kick off, would you just tell us a little bit about you and give us a brief history of your relationship with food and weight, whatever you want to share from childhood into adulthood.
Victoria:
Sure. So right now I live in Massachusetts with my husband and we have a two year old and a two month old and I work part time. I’m on maternity leave right now. I also write novels and that’s a big thing for me that has helped me in some ways with food freedom and so I can talk more about that. My struggle with food, it’s almost as young as I can remember.
My first memory is that for some reason in second grade. I don’t know, I had an anger streak or I was upset about stuff and I started to turn towards eating bagel bites, which I know sounds so funny, but for whatever reason, I just remember that’s what I wanted to eat when I came home from school.
And I remember my pediatrician that you’re saying, you’re kind of starting to get chunky. I was seven and from then forward,have so many memories of so many different diets. When I was nine, I started figure skating and that’s a good way to almost guarantee that you’re going to have trouble with food because it’s a very aesthetic sport.
And people are not shy to make comments about your weight. Even though I started when I was nine, I probably really started getting more serious when I was maybe 11 or 12. And so, I knew that I needed to look a certain way. There were different diet things I tried like Paleo, Weight Watchers, There was actually this one I did with my mom called the one day diet, which was kind of a misnomer. It was this book and you would prepare for two weeks, but like the two weeks leading up to the one day was a lot of restriction and craziness that at that point in my life as, preteen or young teen was just. ridiculous. I still think it’s ridiculous now, but at the time it seemed like, Oh wow, one day to solve all of my problems, just as a teen being a competitive figure skater, people, it was just very common for people to say to me something like, Oh wow, it looks like you lost a couple pounds. You’d probably look better if you lost a few more, or can you lose, can you cut five pounds by the end of the week?
One of the recommendations for weight loss, which is very unhealthy, was to cover my whole body in saran wrap and get on the treadmill. You see so many other kids at that age doing it, and it seems kind of normal because the type of physique that is desired in figure skating is a lot of times not really healthy. To be ultra ultra thin, it’s not necessarily something that you would attain just by eating quote, unquote normally, or just eating in a way that you eat when you’re hungry and you stop and you’re full. It almost required some bizarre techniques to basically look like a rail.
A lot of girls either got their periods really late or got their period and then lost it for years. Just a lot of unhealthiness, add on to that, some coaches I worked with would weigh me and that’s not always embarrassing, but it was never something that felt good. It’s okay, here’s my report card. I’m going to get weighed. So all of that piled onto the fact that before I had started skating, I already had. this thing in my head that I was chunky and I needed to lose weight. It just made for a really bad combination. And I’ll be honest, this is, it’s so sad that I had this mindset, but I’ll admit to it.
When I was, I don’t know, 15 or 16, I was like praying for an eating disorder. I was like, God, if you could give me the willpower to be anorexic, I would love that. I just have a really hard time not eating. But if you could make it so that I could just live off of ice cubes and be okay with it. That would, that would be great for me. And I genuinely would come up with plans in my head of okay, I think I can start just eating ice cubes. And, but I love eating and I love food and so I would always beat myself up for literally not feeling like I had the willpower to be anorexic and I know actually anorexia doesn’t have to do with willpower.
It is an illness, but at the time I was literally jealous of people who had eating disorders because I felt like an eating disorder would be the only way that I could get to a weight that was satisfactory to coaches and to other skaters, judges, what have you. So when I went to college, I started college. I was still skating competitively, but I had a back injury so I was in a back brace and I couldn’t skate for a while. And that was the first time where I felt like I was around a lot of people who weren’t figure skaters and this wasn’t their life. And they saw me as healthy weight and that I looked good.
And I was just blown away. I mean my mindset was so twisted. I genuinely thought I needed to be like a size zero. If I ever wanted to be loved, if I ever wanted to have a boyfriend, if I ever wanted to get married, I needed to be a size zero. I literally didn’t understand how anyone could be bigger than that or overweight and be loved. Like it just didn’t compute because everyone in my life is telling me I need to be really thin. And so, to me, that is like the ticket to people liking me, people loving me. And so, that experience I had in college where I had about four or five months off from training really opened my eyes that there was another world out there and that skating wasn’t the most important thing.
It didn’t heal me. I got back into skating. I still struggled and went through different periods where I had a lot of anxiety and had no appetite and lost a lot of weight. And got a ton of positive affirmation from people of wow, you look amazing and just kind of yo-yoed. Fast forward I ended up going into work in television after school and I was a reporter for a little bit. And so that’s another aesthetic thing where you have to look good. One of my contracts said something where they could make demands about my appearance.
Now they never did. But it’s, it’s kind of just understood that as a woman, they want you to look good. They want you to be thin, etcetera. Anyway, so fast forward, right before I found out I was pregnant with my first baby. It was during COVID. I had gained weight. I think like a lot of people.
I think I had gained like 10 pounds and I was so disgusted with myself. So I actually joined what was called Catholic Mom Calm now, but it was Made for Greatness and the Master’s program. And they had a weight loss program and this was before you were there, Denise. And it was giving up flour and sugar. And I literally found out, like I don’t know, three weeks later or maybe it was the same week that I was pregnant and I was like, Oh, I don’t have to worry about losing weight now. Like I can put this to bed. But by the same token, the idea of another restrictive diet was just, like, is this what my life is going to be like just restriction restriction?
And not that I don’t want to offer things up to God and go through hard times, but I didn’t feel like I had a healed enough relationship with food where doing a severe restriction was going to be healthy for me. So anyway, after I had my baby, that first pregnancy where I definitely was like a lot of my coping technique was like having ice cream, if I was stressed about something let me just go get ice cream. And I was a healthy weight when I started that pregnancy, I gained, within the healthy range. But after that I started doing Weight Watchers a few months after the birth. Lost some weight and then gained some back.
I was getting tired of counting the points and just feeling I cannot do this my whole life. And then I became aware of you, Denise, because you were in Made for Greatness. And it’s funny, because I had never told you this, but So when I, I knew you were like in the wellness weight loss space and when I first heard, I was like, Oh gosh, someone who’s going to tell me to just eat 1200 calories a day, which is not at all how you are.
So when I started seeing your work I decided, let me reach out to Denise. So we started working together and I knew I wanted to have another baby and so about six months after we were working together I got pregnant and so I don’t want to discontinue this work of food freedom because yes, I wanted to lose weight, but I knew that I could lose the weight and do it in a restrictive way that was just sucked the life out of me and I could do that, or I could really get to the root of why this is has taken over my life and why I’m obsessed with food and I said I could still do that work while I’m pregnant
Denise:
Yeah, I want people to hear that. And can you just talk a little bit more Victoria about when you say food freedom? I think so many people when they think about how you just said it’s so beautifully healing your relationship with food which is the work that we do. I believe that there’s this concept of, I’ll do that after the baby’s born. Or that’s not important now. I can’t achieve that now. And so can you talk about the concept of what food freedom means to you and how healing your relationship with food is possible, pregnant, not pregnant, postpartum, like in any season of your life?
Victoria:
Yeah, well, one of the things people say to you when you’re pregnant is oh my gosh, just eat whatever you want, whenever you want. This is a license to really gorge yourself on this type of thing. And as somewhat tempting as that sounds, because I do love dessert, I thought to myself, so what am I going to do? I’m just going to be this way. And then the baby’s born and all of a sudden I’m, what, I’m just going to start restricting. I want a way of life where I think about food and the way that I eat food, meaning the way that I chew, my environment, am I sitting down? I learned these from you, Denise, am I putting my pencils down in between my bites? Am I finishing what I’m eating before I put more food in my mouth?
Those types of things you can do in any season of your life. And so I was like, I want to just practice what I want to do for the rest of my life. It’s literally not going to help me to pretend like this. This pregnancy is just a free for all, which maybe sounds great, but it’s actually the opposite of freedom. It’s almost like food slavery in a sense, because if I think about all of the different temptations I have, food wise, in a day, and I gave in to all of them I would feel sick just like seeing a commercial, my husband loves to watch sports, and so I’ll go in the room sometimes, and then the sports is like, there’s commercials for pizza, Mexican food, DoorDash, and If I see them three in a row or even just once, I want pizza. But do I really want pizza? Is that really what I’m looking for right now? Or am I tired? For me, what not food freedom used to look like was I’d see a pizza commercial and I’d be like, I have to get pizza. So I need to get in the car right now.
I need to find out if I can get food delivered from somewhere and I just can’t let it go. It would just consume me, whereas with food freedom, which is just a lifelong thing, I still so much work to do on the journey, at least now, I don’t think to myself, food is, the most exciting part of my life, whereas it really used to be, it was comforting, it was reliable, especially when I was a teen, And in figure skating, I had to be my own cheerleader food’s not going to make comments about my weight. I just felt like food was the most comforting thing to me when I was a teenager.
Back to your question, what food freedom looks like, when I started working with you, and you were like, okay, we’re going to plan your food the night before, I remember thinking, I’m not going to do that. I’ll do whatever else she says, but I’m not going to plan the food. And now I’m at a place where it makes my life so much better when I plan the food, because if I don’t plan it, because of course there are days where I don’t plan, like that happens to everyone I literally go through the day feeling like I didn’t take care of myself and going, Oh my gosh, what am I going to eat? Should I pull these chips out of the and do this or that? and I noticed too that I enjoy my food more when I plan it because I’m like, Oh, I can’t wait for tonight. I’m going to have this meal and I’m so excited versus everything sort of being reactionary. The main way I would describe food freedom as it is for me is being proactive versus reactive. And so if I’m only making food choices out of reaction Oh, I’m stressed about something. Let me just grab a, like a really quick snack. That’s going to give me a dopamine hit. Or if I’m tired, which is very common when you have little kids and I can’t nap. I’ll literally say to myself, okay, this is going to give me a dopamine hit. I know this is not going to be a long term helping, so that is the type of stuff where it’s just not planned. And in the moment, I usually don’t feel good about myself after I physically usually don’t feel good.
So for me, food freedom is really just being more proactive. I look ahead to the day. It forces me to plan my day in general and to say, okay, I know that there’s going to be this gap of time where I say I’m in the car for a while. I know I’m going to be hungry. I’m just going to plan a snack for that or I know that we’re going to dinner and I don’t know this. It’s a long drive or the restaurant takes forever. So I’m going to make sure that I don’t get to the restaurant completely famished. Things like that is how I see food freedom so that I feel taken care of and I’m not just reaching for food as a reaction to everything that’s happening in my life.
Denise:
I love what you said, so I feel taken care of.
Victoria: Yeah.
Denise:
It’s just making sure that you have your needs met. And it’s part of that whole concept of authentic self care. And so many people think that we have to go get a massage or a pedicure to take care of ourselves.
And it’s really just opening our eyes and like you said, being proactive to make sure that Victoria is taken care of today. She has what she needs.
Victoria:
If someone is okay, in the morning you can either have a massage, which I love getting massages, or you can do your morning sheets that Denise has put together, which is where I plan out my food.
I do like a mind dump, and I do some prayer, and I plan out my day. All of that planning, those sheets to me is the best thing I can do for the rest of my day. As much as I love a massage..
Denise:
I think you touched on it before you said when you were thinking about getting pregnant, you just didn’t want to go on restricting, but the point is, is that you have learned a way of life and not a way of eating; and a way of life that helps you in many other areas of your life and not just your relationship with food and weight.
Victoria:
Yeah, absolutely. And actually I’ll share one thing that was a hang up for me, which is, oh my gosh, silly when I think about it. So when I started working with you, I would have my daily sheets, right? And you would suggest we print them out and fill them out by hand. And I just. didn’t think I was worth printing out the sheets every day. So I was like, it’s going to take ink and it’s going to take paper and that’s going to cost, I mean, realistically, when I did the math, it was like less than three cents a day to print it off.
Denise:
I love that you did the math. That’s great.
Victoria:
I didn’t do the math though for Probably seven or eight months. So for a long time, I was just like, I’m just gonna write on whatever pieces of paper, if I have a journal, I’ll write in my journal, I’ll, do it on my Google doc, but I’m not going to print it because I, and I realized that was such a hang up for me that I was like, wow, I don’t think I’m worth the three cents to print off the papers to me, it made a difference to have them in front of me and to be prompted with the questions versus just like writing in my journal here’s my food plan, here’s this, the food log, like when you’re eating and you’re writing out your hunger levels and your thoughts and stuff, let’s be honest, I wasn’t going to write that out on my Google Doc or on my sheet of paper, having it already designed and to just print was the point of it all.
I thought it was a big victory when I decided, no, I’m, I’m worth these pennies to do this work. And I think that’s kind of part of the whole work was just realizing that for a long time, didn’t think working on my relationship with food was a worthwhile endeavor because it seemed like selfish, but also that this shouldn’t be a problem, like I shouldn’t be where I’m at and people figure this out and there are some people who have said some really like insensitive things about, weight loss will they’ll say, can you just shut your mouth or can you just put the fork down when you have a lot of messages around this is what you should look like and so and so is able to do this then. I shouldn’t struggle with this, and so I’m not going to take the time to work on it, but I got to a point where I realized, no, besides my relationship with God and my husband this is up there in importance because I’m giving away so much of my brain power to worrying about food to being crabby when I am eating like in a way that doesn’t make me feel good. And then I’m mad at myself and then I’m short with people like I knew that this would benefit me, but it would also benefit my family and.
I just knew that it was going to be part of my spiritual journey.
Denise:
Yeah, I love that part of your spiritual journey. Amen. I mean , I’m sure that you can also see how it’s affected your ability to hear the Lord’s voice.
Victoria:
Yeah, just the, to sit down and say, okay, I need to, I’m going to fill these sheets out in the morning and make time to talk and to feel like I was worth doing that versus No, you got to hit the ground running and get stuff done from the second you wake up.
But to say, okay, no, I can take time and it is best for me to take time to talk to God and to talk to him especially about my struggles. To ask him like, what do you want me to know? I remember one of my revelations when I was working with you Denise was that I just felt like it brought the devil a lot of joy to see me struggle where he was like yeah, cuz if you’re thinking about this all the time you’re constantly thinking, okay, should I go and have a handful of chips or should I try to make something from the freezer? Should I? Maybe I’ll just go drive somewhere and just grab a quick snack or crap. What time are we gonna eat dinner? And what should I eat for dinner? Should I get the full fat cheese at the store or the reduced fat like which would be better? You know, just a million little things about food throughout the day was keeping me small and keeping me stuck and I knew that the devil would love that because then I’m not really being fully human in a sense and being fully alive and being fully a wife and a mom.
And so, it’s something that is, I’m still working on, but should, when I tell myself the devil is so happy when I struggle and that my attention is just basically becoming obsessed with food, then I’m, really motivated to be like I don’t want him to win and I don’t want him to steal my time and my focus. And so that has helped me to believe that this is something worthwhile worth fighting for.
Denise:
I will have you before we get off because I’m sure everyone is wow, yes, I’m feeling the same way. And yes, I want what she has. And so I want you to tell us. a little bit about your recovery journey. But before that, can you tell us the differences between your first and second pregnancy, your second pregnancy being that you were doing this work. You were doing the food freedom work.
Victoria:
Yeah. So I, the first pregnancy, I think I gained like 35 pounds, which they say was, is within normal. Second pregnancy, I gained 27 or 28 pounds, which I thought was interesting because in my second pregnancy, I had a boy. He was a little bigger than my daughter, so I actually gained less weight, but I had a bigger baby and so those are just kind of objective differences. But in terms of the experience of pregnancy I felt just like going through pregnancy, the second time I have the tools when I’m done being pregnant to lose the weight and it’s not going to require this massive change from what I’m currently doing. It’s just going to require me to actually continue to do the work of planning my food and logging my feelings whereas my first pregnancy, it was like. Kind of scary because it was like, what am I going to do after this? Am I going to do Doom? Am I going to do Weight Watchers?
Am I going to do something else drastic? And just this fear of the day is coming. I guess in my head it just felt like there was a timer in the first pregnancy of Okay, this is going to end at some point, and you’re going to have to make some big changes.
And you’re never prepared to wake up one day and 180 your lifestyle or the way that you eat. I was always inspired by, Whole30 or these massive uprooting of how you eat. But , it was always hard for me to stick to it. For me with my disordered eating past, just not a healthy way to approach it.
There’s so much mental work to be done underneath the surface I wanted the way I eat to change to be like a fruit of my mind changing versus the opposite, which with dieting is to change all the exterior and then the interior, the mindset doesn’t really change. So you’re just going to kind of have willpower and white knuckle your way into this like a totally different diet. So it was a difference of feeling more hope during my second pregnancy that, I know how I’m planning to eat the rest of my life in the sense of I want to be seated, chewing my food fully, and emptying my mouth before I put more food in, I’m not asking myself to do a 180 as soon as this pregnancy is over.
And that’s honestly, a much better feeling than being in it and just thinking, once this is done life’s gonna really stink.
Denise:
It’s like, you can practice all of those things that are sane, peaceful ways of eating, even during your pregnancy. You can check in with your feelings during your pregnancy. You can notice when you’re stressed during your pregnancy. You can do all of that. And the thing is, is that even as you grow in food freedom, you will emotionally eat, but at least you’ll know when you’re doing it.
Victoria:
Yeah, I tell myself, okay, I’m choosing right now to emotionally eat and eat food and I’m not hungry and okay, at least I know I’m choosing it.
Denise:
I also want to bring up the point when you said you’re so inspired by Whole30 or hearing people who give up sugar and flour and their lives change. That’s cool for people who have a certain relationship with food, but the truth is, is that if. If a diet isn’t what’s holding up your weight loss or your peace with food, if what’s really holding up your ability to have a sane and healthy relationship with food and your weight is your emotional eating, then Whole30 won’t solve and teach you how to not emotionally eat.
Giving up sugar won’t teach you how to not emotionally eat. Giving up flour won’t teach you those skills. All it will do is actually distract you from the real work and hold up your progress. Because where you could have been spending your attention on the real problem, now it’s just distracted and your energy is being used up pursuing a certain body size. Which is only short term. I think everyone is really inspired by how far you’ve come, especially all of the things that you endured as a teenager being a competitive ice skater. And so, what has brought you to this point? So if you can speak to the woman who found herself, just like you were after your first pregnancy, where you’re chasing the restriction, chasing the deprivation, and you just thought, I just can’t do this my whole life, what would you say to her?
Victoria:
Well, I would tell her to invite God into the process because he really does care. And he really can lead you on to a path where you don’t feel controlled by food thoughts all the time and where food isn’t the most exciting thing in your life anymore, I think just that mindset shift of “No, it doesn’t have to be this way my whole life” I’m not doomed into this. To ask God to, show me that it’s possible. Show me what’s possible. And to instill hope in me when I’m not feeling hopeful.
And to remind me that you’re there, that you care about my struggle. I just feel like you can’t go wrong when you invite God into something for a long time. I saw some parts of my life as being outside of God. And the more that I was able to see that he’s actually a part of everything, I Know what’s possible now for me in this food freedom realm.
I’m not there, but I really try to walk with the Lord every day in it. And to me I know, that’s so much better than the quick weight loss of 1200 calories a day to lose weight. I know it’s tempting and I still feel tempted by restriction diets, but I also know that in conversation with the Lord that if he wants it, if I get to a point where he’s you know what, Victoria, I want you to try intermittent fasting or I want you to try, giving up sugar I’ll be able to know that and I’ll feel very consoled by that decision because I’m discerning it with him.
But If, if you’re not in conversation with God, it just feels like the prospect of losing weight feels so overwhelming.
Denise:
That’s so wonderful. That’s so true. I love how you said something about when food is the only exciting thing in your life.
So, how are you able to add some excitement and pleasure and fun into your life? Because it is so true once we get into that emotional eating cycle, our head is down and all we see is the plate. We’re happy. We eat. We’re sad. We eat. We want to celebrate. We eat. We want to have fun. We want, all of the, all of the emotions we tend to find food’s a solution. So tell me about that.
Victoria:
Yeah. This is an exercise you had me do to think of pleasurable activities. So for me I love reading fiction and so reading fiction, I get an emotional high from obviously if it’s a good book and also, I write fiction and I love kind of, I guess you could call it escaping when I go into writing, but it’s one of those things where I could be writing for a really long time and not realize the time has passed if I had instead spent that time just sitting in the kitchen, I would have been, Oh, I want some food, but I had found myself in something that was consuming and fun. Also, I like lighting candles. I feel like that helps me to just be in a better mood. Sometimes my husband and I find a TV show that we like. It’s for me, it’s going to be like, Oh, that’s something I can look forward to because one of the things I struggle with sometimes is Oh, there’s nothing to look forward to the rest of the day. And that’s a mindset that I’m working on probing to kind of see where that came from.
I think also just having friends and prioritizing time you can spend with friends. I know it’s hard as a mom to have that time, but to prioritize having fun with friends, adult friends that you can go to a movie with or just go over and chat and the kids can play.
And I think just realizing that as much work as we take on as moms that we can have fun too. And so I try to look for something I like watching comedy specials. Jim Gaffigan, I’m a fan. Jen Fullweiler. I just actually started watching Kevin James. He was the King of Queens. So, literally, that’s one of the other ways, too, that I get myself laughing and try to have fun.
So obviously it’s different for everyone because some of these things aren’t going to sound appealing, but I don’t really figure skate anymore, but I do love to dance. So Zumba is super fun for me. I still take ballet class. To find something that you think is fun and to tell yourself that.
It’s okay for you to be a mom, to be just a person, a woman who has fun and does things outside of her children and her husband, and that, the Lord delights in seeing us at leisure and at recreation. So I think that’s something to cultivate.
Denise:
I love that. Victoria, you’re, this has been so full of inspiration and life giving wisdom. I do want to know that this, you to know that this journey of food freedom just continues to unfold and unfold. And we’re just all like onions where the Lord’s like, all right, let me peel this layer off and then he reveals different things to you. So it’s, we’re always growing. We’ll never all be there right?
So you’re just part of this journey. So if someone’s interested in reading some of the fiction in the novels that you write, can you tell us a little bit about what kind of fiction it is and where they can find your books?
Victoria:
Sure! So it is what I would call contemporary Catholic fiction for women, meaning that my stories take place in the current day. I’m not a historical fiction writer, it’s not a thriller. It’s really just everyday people and different situations that arise, but I wrote my most recent novel called “All Things New” is about a couple that has gotten divorced and is going through the annulment process, but then is questioning.
We made a commitment to each other and I won’t spoil the ending, but it is a pro marriage it’s just a beautiful, I think, a beautiful story about the beauty of the vows of marriage and the choice to love even when things are really, really hard. So you can find my books on Amazon.
Victoria Everly is what you can search for. Also, I have a website, victoriaeverly.com, and you can go there and the links to Amazon are on there as well.
Denise:
Alright, I’ll make sure I put that in the show notes. Well, Victoria, it has been a pleasure and such a gift to all of us my listeners. Thank you for being here.
Denise:
You are, so to kick off, would you just tell us a little bit about you and give us a brief history of your relationship with food and weight, whatever you want to share from childhood into adulthood.
Victoria:
Sure. So right now I live in Massachusetts with my husband and we have a two year old and a two month old and I work part time. I’m on maternity leave right now. I also write novels and that’s a big thing for me that has helped me in some ways with food freedom and so I can talk more about that. My struggle with food, it’s almost as young as I can remember.
My first memory is that for some reason in second grade. I don’t know, I had an anger streak or I was upset about stuff and I started to turn towards eating bagel bites, which I know sounds so funny, but for whatever reason, I just remember that’s what I wanted to eat when I came home from school.
And I remember my pediatrician that you’re saying, you’re kind of starting to get chunky. I was seven and from then forward,have so many memories of so many different diets. When I was nine, I started figure skating and that’s a good way to almost guarantee that you’re going to have trouble with food because it’s a very aesthetic sport.
And people are not shy to make comments about your weight. Even though I started when I was nine, I probably really started getting more serious when I was maybe 11 or 12. And so, I knew that I needed to look a certain way. There were different diet things I tried like Paleo, Weight Watchers, There was actually this one I did with my mom called the one day diet, which was kind of a misnomer. It was this book and you would prepare for two weeks, but like the two weeks leading up to the one day was a lot of restriction and craziness that at that point in my life as, preteen or young teen was just. ridiculous. I still think it’s ridiculous now, but at the time it seemed like, Oh wow, one day to solve all of my problems, just as a teen being a competitive figure skater, people, it was just very common for people to say to me something like, Oh wow, it looks like you lost a couple pounds. You’d probably look better if you lost a few more, or can you lose, can you cut five pounds by the end of the week?
One of the recommendations for weight loss, which is very unhealthy, was to cover my whole body in saran wrap and get on the treadmill. You see so many other kids at that age doing it, and it seems kind of normal because the type of physique that is desired in figure skating is a lot of times not really healthy. To be ultra ultra thin, it’s not necessarily something that you would attain just by eating quote, unquote normally, or just eating in a way that you eat when you’re hungry and you stop and you’re full. It almost required some bizarre techniques to basically look like a rail.
A lot of girls either got their periods really late or got their period and then lost it for years. Just a lot of unhealthiness, add on to that, some coaches I worked with would weigh me and that’s not always embarrassing, but it was never something that felt good. It’s okay, here’s my report card. I’m going to get weighed. So all of that piled onto the fact that before I had started skating, I already had. this thing in my head that I was chunky and I needed to lose weight. It just made for a really bad combination. And I’ll be honest, this is, it’s so sad that I had this mindset, but I’ll admit to it.
When I was, I don’t know, 15 or 16, I was like praying for an eating disorder. I was like, God, if you could give me the willpower to be anorexic, I would love that. I just have a really hard time not eating. But if you could make it so that I could just live off of ice cubes and be okay with it. That would, that would be great for me. And I genuinely would come up with plans in my head of okay, I think I can start just eating ice cubes. And, but I love eating and I love food and so I would always beat myself up for literally not feeling like I had the willpower to be anorexic and I know actually anorexia doesn’t have to do with willpower.
It is an illness, but at the time I was literally jealous of people who had eating disorders because I felt like an eating disorder would be the only way that I could get to a weight that was satisfactory to coaches and to other skaters, judges, what have you. So when I went to college, I started college. I was still skating competitively, but I had a back injury so I was in a back brace and I couldn’t skate for a while. And that was the first time where I felt like I was around a lot of people who weren’t figure skaters and this wasn’t their life. And they saw me as healthy weight and that I looked good.
And I was just blown away. I mean my mindset was so twisted. I genuinely thought I needed to be like a size zero. If I ever wanted to be loved, if I ever wanted to have a boyfriend, if I ever wanted to get married, I needed to be a size zero. I literally didn’t understand how anyone could be bigger than that or overweight and be loved. Like it just didn’t compute because everyone in my life is telling me I need to be really thin. And so, to me, that is like the ticket to people liking me, people loving me. And so, that experience I had in college where I had about four or five months off from training really opened my eyes that there was another world out there and that skating wasn’t the most important thing.
It didn’t heal me. I got back into skating. I still struggled and went through different periods where I had a lot of anxiety and had no appetite and lost a lot of weight. And got a ton of positive affirmation from people of wow, you look amazing and just kind of yo-yoed. Fast forward I ended up going into work in television after school and I was a reporter for a little bit. And so that’s another aesthetic thing where you have to look good. One of my contracts said something where they could make demands about my appearance.
Now they never did. But it’s, it’s kind of just understood that as a woman, they want you to look good. They want you to be thin, etcetera. Anyway, so fast forward, right before I found out I was pregnant with my first baby. It was during COVID. I had gained weight. I think like a lot of people.
I think I had gained like 10 pounds and I was so disgusted with myself. So I actually joined what was called Catholic Mom Calm now, but it was Made for Greatness and the Master’s program. And they had a weight loss program and this was before you were there, Denise. And it was giving up flour and sugar. And I literally found out, like I don’t know, three weeks later or maybe it was the same week that I was pregnant and I was like, Oh, I don’t have to worry about losing weight now. Like I can put this to bed. But by the same token, the idea of another restrictive diet was just, like, is this what my life is going to be like just restriction restriction?
And not that I don’t want to offer things up to God and go through hard times, but I didn’t feel like I had a healed enough relationship with food where doing a severe restriction was going to be healthy for me. So anyway, after I had my baby, that first pregnancy where I definitely was like a lot of my coping technique was like having ice cream, if I was stressed about something let me just go get ice cream. And I was a healthy weight when I started that pregnancy, I gained, within the healthy range. But after that I started doing Weight Watchers a few months after the birth. Lost some weight and then gained some back.
I was getting tired of counting the points and just feeling I cannot do this my whole life. And then I became aware of you, Denise, because you were in Made for Greatness. And it’s funny, because I had never told you this, but So when I, I knew you were like in the wellness weight loss space and when I first heard, I was like, Oh gosh, someone who’s going to tell me to just eat 1200 calories a day, which is not at all how you are.
So when I started seeing your work I decided, let me reach out to Denise. So we started working together and I knew I wanted to have another baby and so about six months after we were working together I got pregnant and so I don’t want to discontinue this work of food freedom because yes, I wanted to lose weight, but I knew that I could lose the weight and do it in a restrictive way that was just sucked the life out of me and I could do that, or I could really get to the root of why this is has taken over my life and why I’m obsessed with food and I said I could still do that work while I’m pregnant
Denise:
Yeah, I want people to hear that. And can you just talk a little bit more Victoria about when you say food freedom? I think so many people when they think about how you just said it’s so beautifully healing your relationship with food which is the work that we do. I believe that there’s this concept of, I’ll do that after the baby’s born. Or that’s not important now. I can’t achieve that now. And so can you talk about the concept of what food freedom means to you and how healing your relationship with food is possible, pregnant, not pregnant, postpartum, like in any season of your life?
Victoria:
Yeah, well, one of the things people say to you when you’re pregnant is oh my gosh, just eat whatever you want, whenever you want. This is a license to really gorge yourself on this type of thing. And as somewhat tempting as that sounds, because I do love dessert, I thought to myself, so what am I going to do? I’m just going to be this way. And then the baby’s born and all of a sudden I’m, what, I’m just going to start restricting. I want a way of life where I think about food and the way that I eat food, meaning the way that I chew, my environment, am I sitting down? I learned these from you, Denise, am I putting my pencils down in between my bites? Am I finishing what I’m eating before I put more food in my mouth?
Those types of things you can do in any season of your life. And so I was like, I want to just practice what I want to do for the rest of my life. It’s literally not going to help me to pretend like this. This pregnancy is just a free for all, which maybe sounds great, but it’s actually the opposite of freedom. It’s almost like food slavery in a sense, because if I think about all of the different temptations I have, food wise, in a day, and I gave in to all of them I would feel sick just like seeing a commercial, my husband loves to watch sports, and so I’ll go in the room sometimes, and then the sports is like, there’s commercials for pizza, Mexican food, DoorDash, and If I see them three in a row or even just once, I want pizza. But do I really want pizza? Is that really what I’m looking for right now? Or am I tired? For me, what not food freedom used to look like was I’d see a pizza commercial and I’d be like, I have to get pizza. So I need to get in the car right now.
I need to find out if I can get food delivered from somewhere and I just can’t let it go. It would just consume me, whereas with food freedom, which is just a lifelong thing, I still so much work to do on the journey, at least now, I don’t think to myself, food is, the most exciting part of my life, whereas it really used to be, it was comforting, it was reliable, especially when I was a teen, And in figure skating, I had to be my own cheerleader food’s not going to make comments about my weight. I just felt like food was the most comforting thing to me when I was a teenager.
Back to your question, what food freedom looks like, when I started working with you, and you were like, okay, we’re going to plan your food the night before, I remember thinking, I’m not going to do that. I’ll do whatever else she says, but I’m not going to plan the food. And now I’m at a place where it makes my life so much better when I plan the food, because if I don’t plan it, because of course there are days where I don’t plan, like that happens to everyone I literally go through the day feeling like I didn’t take care of myself and going, Oh my gosh, what am I going to eat? Should I pull these chips out of the and do this or that? and I noticed too that I enjoy my food more when I plan it because I’m like, Oh, I can’t wait for tonight. I’m going to have this meal and I’m so excited versus everything sort of being reactionary. The main way I would describe food freedom as it is for me is being proactive versus reactive. And so if I’m only making food choices out of reaction Oh, I’m stressed about something. Let me just grab a, like a really quick snack. That’s going to give me a dopamine hit. Or if I’m tired, which is very common when you have little kids and I can’t nap. I’ll literally say to myself, okay, this is going to give me a dopamine hit. I know this is not going to be a long term helping, so that is the type of stuff where it’s just not planned. And in the moment, I usually don’t feel good about myself after I physically usually don’t feel good.
So for me, food freedom is really just being more proactive. I look ahead to the day. It forces me to plan my day in general and to say, okay, I know that there’s going to be this gap of time where I say I’m in the car for a while. I know I’m going to be hungry. I’m just going to plan a snack for that or I know that we’re going to dinner and I don’t know this. It’s a long drive or the restaurant takes forever. So I’m going to make sure that I don’t get to the restaurant completely famished. Things like that is how I see food freedom so that I feel taken care of and I’m not just reaching for food as a reaction to everything that’s happening in my life.
Denise:
I love what you said, so I feel taken care of.
Victoria: Yeah.
Denise:
It’s just making sure that you have your needs met. And it’s part of that whole concept of authentic self care. And so many people think that we have to go get a massage or a pedicure to take care of ourselves.
And it’s really just opening our eyes and like you said, being proactive to make sure that Victoria is taken care of today. She has what she needs.
Victoria:
If someone is okay, in the morning you can either have a massage, which I love getting massages, or you can do your morning sheets that Denise has put together, which is where I plan out my food.
I do like a mind dump, and I do some prayer, and I plan out my day. All of that planning, those sheets to me is the best thing I can do for the rest of my day. As much as I love a massage..
Denise:
I think you touched on it before you said when you were thinking about getting pregnant, you just didn’t want to go on restricting, but the point is, is that you have learned a way of life and not a way of eating; and a way of life that helps you in many other areas of your life and not just your relationship with food and weight.
Victoria:
Yeah, absolutely. And actually I’ll share one thing that was a hang up for me, which is, oh my gosh, silly when I think about it. So when I started working with you, I would have my daily sheets, right? And you would suggest we print them out and fill them out by hand. And I just. didn’t think I was worth printing out the sheets every day. So I was like, it’s going to take ink and it’s going to take paper and that’s going to cost, I mean, realistically, when I did the math, it was like less than three cents a day to print it off.
Denise:
I love that you did the math. That’s great.
Victoria:
I didn’t do the math though for Probably seven or eight months. So for a long time, I was just like, I’m just gonna write on whatever pieces of paper, if I have a journal, I’ll write in my journal, I’ll, do it on my Google doc, but I’m not going to print it because I, and I realized that was such a hang up for me that I was like, wow, I don’t think I’m worth the three cents to print off the papers to me, it made a difference to have them in front of me and to be prompted with the questions versus just like writing in my journal here’s my food plan, here’s this, the food log, like when you’re eating and you’re writing out your hunger levels and your thoughts and stuff, let’s be honest, I wasn’t going to write that out on my Google Doc or on my sheet of paper, having it already designed and to just print was the point of it all.
I thought it was a big victory when I decided, no, I’m, I’m worth these pennies to do this work. And I think that’s kind of part of the whole work was just realizing that for a long time, didn’t think working on my relationship with food was a worthwhile endeavor because it seemed like selfish, but also that this shouldn’t be a problem, like I shouldn’t be where I’m at and people figure this out and there are some people who have said some really like insensitive things about, weight loss will they’ll say, can you just shut your mouth or can you just put the fork down when you have a lot of messages around this is what you should look like and so and so is able to do this then. I shouldn’t struggle with this, and so I’m not going to take the time to work on it, but I got to a point where I realized, no, besides my relationship with God and my husband this is up there in importance because I’m giving away so much of my brain power to worrying about food to being crabby when I am eating like in a way that doesn’t make me feel good. And then I’m mad at myself and then I’m short with people like I knew that this would benefit me, but it would also benefit my family and.
I just knew that it was going to be part of my spiritual journey.
Denise:
Yeah, I love that part of your spiritual journey. Amen. I mean , I’m sure that you can also see how it’s affected your ability to hear the Lord’s voice.
Victoria:
Yeah, just the, to sit down and say, okay, I need to, I’m going to fill these sheets out in the morning and make time to talk and to feel like I was worth doing that versus No, you got to hit the ground running and get stuff done from the second you wake up.
But to say, okay, no, I can take time and it is best for me to take time to talk to God and to talk to him especially about my struggles. To ask him like, what do you want me to know? I remember one of my revelations when I was working with you Denise was that I just felt like it brought the devil a lot of joy to see me struggle where he was like yeah, cuz if you’re thinking about this all the time you’re constantly thinking, okay, should I go and have a handful of chips or should I try to make something from the freezer? Should I? Maybe I’ll just go drive somewhere and just grab a quick snack or crap. What time are we gonna eat dinner? And what should I eat for dinner? Should I get the full fat cheese at the store or the reduced fat like which would be better? You know, just a million little things about food throughout the day was keeping me small and keeping me stuck and I knew that the devil would love that because then I’m not really being fully human in a sense and being fully alive and being fully a wife and a mom.
And so, it’s something that is, I’m still working on, but should, when I tell myself the devil is so happy when I struggle and that my attention is just basically becoming obsessed with food, then I’m, really motivated to be like I don’t want him to win and I don’t want him to steal my time and my focus. And so that has helped me to believe that this is something worthwhile worth fighting for.
Denise:
I will have you before we get off because I’m sure everyone is wow, yes, I’m feeling the same way. And yes, I want what she has. And so I want you to tell us. a little bit about your recovery journey. But before that, can you tell us the differences between your first and second pregnancy, your second pregnancy being that you were doing this work. You were doing the food freedom work.
Victoria:
Yeah. So I, the first pregnancy, I think I gained like 35 pounds, which they say was, is within normal. Second pregnancy, I gained 27 or 28 pounds, which I thought was interesting because in my second pregnancy, I had a boy. He was a little bigger than my daughter, so I actually gained less weight, but I had a bigger baby and so those are just kind of objective differences. But in terms of the experience of pregnancy I felt just like going through pregnancy, the second time I have the tools when I’m done being pregnant to lose the weight and it’s not going to require this massive change from what I’m currently doing. It’s just going to require me to actually continue to do the work of planning my food and logging my feelings whereas my first pregnancy, it was like. Kind of scary because it was like, what am I going to do after this? Am I going to do Doom? Am I going to do Weight Watchers?
Am I going to do something else drastic? And just this fear of the day is coming. I guess in my head it just felt like there was a timer in the first pregnancy of Okay, this is going to end at some point, and you’re going to have to make some big changes.
And you’re never prepared to wake up one day and 180 your lifestyle or the way that you eat. I was always inspired by, Whole30 or these massive uprooting of how you eat. But , it was always hard for me to stick to it. For me with my disordered eating past, just not a healthy way to approach it.
There’s so much mental work to be done underneath the surface I wanted the way I eat to change to be like a fruit of my mind changing versus the opposite, which with dieting is to change all the exterior and then the interior, the mindset doesn’t really change. So you’re just going to kind of have willpower and white knuckle your way into this like a totally different diet. So it was a difference of feeling more hope during my second pregnancy that, I know how I’m planning to eat the rest of my life in the sense of I want to be seated, chewing my food fully, and emptying my mouth before I put more food in, I’m not asking myself to do a 180 as soon as this pregnancy is over.
And that’s honestly, a much better feeling than being in it and just thinking, once this is done life’s gonna really stink.
Denise:
It’s like, you can practice all of those things that are sane, peaceful ways of eating, even during your pregnancy. You can check in with your feelings during your pregnancy. You can notice when you’re stressed during your pregnancy. You can do all of that. And the thing is, is that even as you grow in food freedom, you will emotionally eat, but at least you’ll know when you’re doing it.
Victoria:
Yeah, I tell myself, okay, I’m choosing right now to emotionally eat and eat food and I’m not hungry and okay, at least I know I’m choosing it.
Denise:
I also want to bring up the point when you said you’re so inspired by Whole30 or hearing people who give up sugar and flour and their lives change. That’s cool for people who have a certain relationship with food, but the truth is, is that if. If a diet isn’t what’s holding up your weight loss or your peace with food, if what’s really holding up your ability to have a sane and healthy relationship with food and your weight is your emotional eating, then Whole30 won’t solve and teach you how to not emotionally eat.
Giving up sugar won’t teach you how to not emotionally eat. Giving up flour won’t teach you those skills. All it will do is actually distract you from the real work and hold up your progress. Because where you could have been spending your attention on the real problem, now it’s just distracted and your energy is being used up pursuing a certain body size. Which is only short term. I think everyone is really inspired by how far you’ve come, especially all of the things that you endured as a teenager being a competitive ice skater. And so, what has brought you to this point? So if you can speak to the woman who found herself, just like you were after your first pregnancy, where you’re chasing the restriction, chasing the deprivation, and you just thought, I just can’t do this my whole life, what would you say to her?
Victoria:
Well, I would tell her to invite God into the process because he really does care. And he really can lead you on to a path where you don’t feel controlled by food thoughts all the time and where food isn’t the most exciting thing in your life anymore, I think just that mindset shift of “No, it doesn’t have to be this way my whole life” I’m not doomed into this. To ask God to, show me that it’s possible. Show me what’s possible. And to instill hope in me when I’m not feeling hopeful.
And to remind me that you’re there, that you care about my struggle. I just feel like you can’t go wrong when you invite God into something for a long time. I saw some parts of my life as being outside of God. And the more that I was able to see that he’s actually a part of everything, I Know what’s possible now for me in this food freedom realm.
I’m not there, but I really try to walk with the Lord every day in it. And to me I know, that’s so much better than the quick weight loss of 1200 calories a day to lose weight. I know it’s tempting and I still feel tempted by restriction diets, but I also know that in conversation with the Lord that if he wants it, if I get to a point where he’s you know what, Victoria, I want you to try intermittent fasting or I want you to try, giving up sugar I’ll be able to know that and I’ll feel very consoled by that decision because I’m discerning it with him.
But If, if you’re not in conversation with God, it just feels like the prospect of losing weight feels so overwhelming.
Denise:
That’s so wonderful. That’s so true. I love how you said something about when food is the only exciting thing in your life.
So, how are you able to add some excitement and pleasure and fun into your life? Because it is so true once we get into that emotional eating cycle, our head is down and all we see is the plate. We’re happy. We eat. We’re sad. We eat. We want to celebrate. We eat. We want to have fun. We want, all of the, all of the emotions we tend to find food’s a solution. So tell me about that.
Victoria:
Yeah. This is an exercise you had me do to think of pleasurable activities. So for me I love reading fiction and so reading fiction, I get an emotional high from obviously if it’s a good book and also, I write fiction and I love kind of, I guess you could call it escaping when I go into writing, but it’s one of those things where I could be writing for a really long time and not realize the time has passed if I had instead spent that time just sitting in the kitchen, I would have been, Oh, I want some food, but I had found myself in something that was consuming and fun. Also, I like lighting candles. I feel like that helps me to just be in a better mood. Sometimes my husband and I find a TV show that we like. It’s for me, it’s going to be like, Oh, that’s something I can look forward to because one of the things I struggle with sometimes is Oh, there’s nothing to look forward to the rest of the day. And that’s a mindset that I’m working on probing to kind of see where that came from.
I think also just having friends and prioritizing time you can spend with friends. I know it’s hard as a mom to have that time, but to prioritize having fun with friends, adult friends that you can go to a movie with or just go over and chat and the kids can play.
And I think just realizing that as much work as we take on as moms that we can have fun too. And so I try to look for something I like watching comedy specials. Jim Gaffigan, I’m a fan. Jen Fullweiler. I just actually started watching Kevin James. He was the King of Queens. So, literally, that’s one of the other ways, too, that I get myself laughing and try to have fun.
So obviously it’s different for everyone because some of these things aren’t going to sound appealing, but I don’t really figure skate anymore, but I do love to dance. So Zumba is super fun for me. I still take ballet class. To find something that you think is fun and to tell yourself that.
It’s okay for you to be a mom, to be just a person, a woman who has fun and does things outside of her children and her husband, and that, the Lord delights in seeing us at leisure and at recreation. So I think that’s something to cultivate.
Denise:
I love that. Victoria, you’re, this has been so full of inspiration and life giving wisdom. I do want to know that this, you to know that this journey of food freedom just continues to unfold and unfold. And we’re just all like onions where the Lord’s like, all right, let me peel this layer off and then he reveals different things to you. So it’s, we’re always growing. We’ll never all be there right?
So you’re just part of this journey. So if someone’s interested in reading some of the fiction in the novels that you write, can you tell us a little bit about what kind of fiction it is and where they can find your books?
Victoria:
Sure! So it is what I would call contemporary Catholic fiction for women, meaning that my stories take place in the current day. I’m not a historical fiction writer, it’s not a thriller. It’s really just everyday people and different situations that arise, but I wrote my most recent novel called “All Things New” is about a couple that has gotten divorced and is going through the annulment process, but then is questioning.
We made a commitment to each other and I won’t spoil the ending, but it is a pro marriage it’s just a beautiful, I think, a beautiful story about the beauty of the vows of marriage and the choice to love even when things are really, really hard. So you can find my books on Amazon.
Victoria Everly is what you can search for. Also, I have a website, victoriaeverly.com, and you can go there and the links to Amazon are on there as well.
Denise:
Alright, I’ll make sure I put that in the show notes. Well, Victoria, it has been a pleasure and such a gift to all of us my listeners. Thank you for being here.
Victoria:
Thank you so much, Denise. This was great.