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Understanding Disordered Eating: Eating Disorder Recovery and Body Image Healing

Understanding Disordered Eating: Eating Disorder Recovery and Body Image Healing

By: Rachelle Heinemann
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About this listen

This show will explore the deeper meaning of our relationship with food. We dive into issues related to body image, restriction, bingeing, purging, compulsive exercise, and eating disorder related behaviors. We utilize ideas from psychoanalysis, the deep work therapy, to bring you answers about why you do the things you do and one step closer to a healthier relationship with food and yourself. Hygiene & Healthy Living Psychology Psychology & Mental Health
Episodes
  • 185. Emotional Eating at Night
    Dec 23 2025

    For so many of us, nighttime feels like stepping into a different version of ourselves. One that feels "fine" all day, but starts to unravel the moment the sun goes down. One who can't stop thinking about snacks, who wanders into the kitchen on autopilot, who feels out of control around food in ways that never show up at noon. It can feel confusing, frustrating, even shameful.

    Listen to the full episode for the full unpacking and for the practical steps that can help you finally feel at peace when the night comes.

    Tweetable Quotes

    "Your body might not be confused or just randomly anxious. It might actually be undernourished." - Rachelle Heinemann

    "Sometimes we get caught up in what we call healthy habits… and these are like the perfect conditions to breed bingey eating or nighttime food anxiety." - Rachelle Heinemann

    "At night, usually that's where all the leftovers emotionally show up." - Rachelle Heinemann

    "Emotional hunger is not fake hunger, it's just a metaphoric hunger." - Rachelle Heinemann

    "If you're hungry, whether it's metaphoric or otherwise, you're hungry for something." - Rachelle Heinemann

    Resources

    Grab my Journal Prompts Here!

    Looking for a speaker for an upcoming event? Let's chat!

    Now accepting new clients! Find out if we're a good fit!

    LEAVE A REVIEW + help someone who may need this podcast by sharing this episode.

    Be sure to sign up for my weekly newsletter here!

    You can connect with me on Instagram @rachelleheinemann, through my website www.rachelleheinemann.com, or email me directly at rachelle@rachelleheinemann.com

    Show More Show Less
    22 mins
  • 184. Hope, Healing, and the Bucket List You Didn't Know You Needed with Dr. Jeffrey DeSarbo
    Dec 16 2025

    Struggling to find motivation in recovery, or trying to make sense of what keeps people pushing through something as painful as an eating disorder, opens a door to a much deeper conversation. This episode steps right through that door.

    In this episode, we welcome back a longtime favorite guest: Dr. Jeffrey DeSarbo, a neuropsychiatrist and internationally known educator whose work sits at the intersection of brain science, mental health, and eating disorder treatment. If you've heard his previous episodes, you already know that he has a profound ability to make complex neuroscience feel not just understandable, but actionable. This time, he brings something new, something that might seem unexpected coming from a neuroscientist: the science of a bucket list. And no, not the Hollywood version. Not skydiving. Not "visit Paris." Something far more foundational.

    Tweetable Quotes

    "It's okay to be skeptical because that's part of it." - Dr. Jeffrey DeSarbo

    "Recovery kind of involves helping the brain remember how to feel that, that curiosity, pleasure, connection, and flexibility again." - Dr. Jeffrey DeSarbo

    "When you go places, and you meet different people with different cultures, the one thing I have learned… it has helped tolerability." - Dr. Jeffrey DeSarbo

    "We're programmed, and we don't even know we're being programmed to think and, more importantly, to react." - Dr. Jeffrey DeSarbo

    "Your brain is always changing." - Dr. Jeffrey DeSarbo

    Resources

    Grab my Journal Prompts Here!

    Looking for a speaker for an upcoming event? Let's chat!

    Now accepting new clients! Find out if we're a good fit!

    Dr. Jeffrey DeSarbo's YouTube Channel

    Dr. Jeffrey DeSarbo's Website

    LEAVE A REVIEW + help someone who may need this podcast by sharing this episode.

    Be sure to sign up for my weekly newsletter here!

    You can connect with me on Instagram @rachelleheinemann, through my website www.rachelleheinemann.com, or email me directly at rachelle@rachelleheinemann.com

    Show More Show Less
    42 mins
  • 183. How Do I Work With Clients Who Don't Want to Gain Weight?
    Dec 9 2025

    Whether you're supporting others or navigating your own process, this episode offers language and perspective to help you sit with the messiness rather than fear it.

    In this episode, we slow down to explore why ambivalence exists, what it reveals about our experiences, and why it's a doorway rather than a roadblock. We unpack the deeper meaning behind body goals, what thinness represents, the safety it promises, and why those promises feel so powerful even when they aren't rooted in truth. You'll learn how to face fear without bypassing it, and why sitting with discomfort is often the catalyst for real change.

    Tweetable Quotes

    "When somebody has an attachment to a certain body size or shape, it's because it means something and it represents something." - Rachelle Heinemann

    "Ambivalence is when you want two things that contradict each other, where there are opposites at the same time. This is literally the purpose of therapy is to work through ambivalence." - Rachelle Heinemann

    "The reason why we get stuck is because of ambivalence. It's because we want two things at the same time, and they're contradicting each other, and we cannot move forward." - Rachelle Heinemann

    "What if we stopped treating body goals as something to take apart or dismantle? And if we started seeing them as something to understand, something to explore?" - Rachelle Heinemann

    Resources

    Grab my Journal Prompts Here!

    Looking for a speaker for an upcoming event? Let's chat!

    Now accepting new clients! Find out if we're a good fit!

    LEAVE A REVIEW + help someone who may need this podcast by sharing this episode.

    Be sure to sign up for my weekly newsletter here!

    You can connect with me on Instagram @rachelleheinemann, through my website www.rachelleheinemann.com, or email me directly at rachelle@rachelleheinemann.com

    Show More Show Less
    22 mins
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