Episode 7: Kim McLaughlin M.A.

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Jessica Fowler: Welcome back to What Your Therapist is Reading. I'm your host, Jessica Fowler. On today's episode, we are speaking with Kim McLaughlin about her book, Feed Your Soul, Nourish Your Life: A Six Step System to Peace with Food.  Kim McLaughlin has a master's degree in clinical psychology, is a licensed therapist and a motivational speaker and coach who works with people struggling with dieting and overeating. Her education, experience with clients, as well as her personal experiences involving food, dieting, and weight issues, helps her to assist people to feel more at peace with food.

 

Please note, the information shared in this podcast is for informational and educational purposes only.

 

Hi, Kim. I'm so excited to have you on the podcast today. We have Kim McLaughlin. She's here to talk about her book, Feed Your Soul, Nourish Your Life, a six step, six step system to peace with food. Um, Kim, welcome. 

 

Kim McLaughlin: Thank you, Jessica. Hi everyone. I'm so glad to be here. Um, I'm so glad to be interviewed about my book. I'm kind of excited about that. I, I don't get, I get interviewed sometimes about the book and I love talking about it. 

 

Jessica Fowler: I was wondering maybe if you can start with sharing a little bit about yourself. How did you? 

 

Kim McLaughlin: Sure. I'm sorry to interrupt, but, uh, I'm super excited. So, uh, I have been a licensed psychotherapist in the state of California for forever. Um, and I you know, for anybody who's listening, there's this thing that happens as you're a psychotherapist where you want to try new things. So I was in nonprofit mental health, working with people at high level placement, out of home placement, homeless, mentally ill, decided I needed to do something different and open my own business, my private practice.

 

And within that, um, we therapists sometimes want to expand. And I just had this thought that it would be so cool to have my own book and it became this book that was solely about what I do. So, it's about the, um, you know, the six-step system is the system I use with all of my clients. So, what I love is that in the book you can follow along cause each chapter is one of the six components with, I always love like having a doable at the end of every, every chapter.

So, like you then try something cause it's one thing to learn. It's one thing to have insight. It's another thing to go. And now what do I do with this, Kim? What do I do? And I wanted to give people the opportunity to start looking at food. So, what I do, actually I don't, I didn't introduce that part, is I work with people who are frustrated, overwhelmed, and overloaded, and it shows up in overeating.

 

And it shows up in overeating and what I tend to call over dieting, where we go from diet to diet, to diet, to diet. And we find that when we are on multiple diets, trying to lose weight, what happens is we lose weight.  And then we gain it back. Everybody has this. It's, it's this just kind of universal story that everybody I talked to has that there is this, um, overeating binge eating, compulsive eating that comes on and people just literally don't know what to do about it. And they don't know. Well, actually what they know to do is they know to do a diet.  And what we know is diets don't work. So we, we just keep doing the diet over and over again because expecting a different result. Right. And what I learned as I moved into my private practice was I wanted to have a niche in, um,  eating disorders.

 

And what I learned about was I learned about intuitive eating and intuitive eating is this way of, looking at food and your life and your emotions and dieting and your thoughts differently so that we can come literally come to the table differently.  Right. Come to the table differently.  But what that means is we need to know what to do because all we've been trained to do is diet after diet after diet after diet.

 

And the people that I work with are frustrated and don't want to do that anymore because they feel horrible about themselves. Horrible. So the book is really about the six step system that I use.  That I learned with intuitive eating and all the other things I've learned throughout the years, put it together and these are the things that I teach all of my clients, right? So, it's a nice starting spot for some, the book is a nice starting spot for somebody who wants to have peace with food, wants to have a different relationship with food, and they can start with the book to start going, Hmm, I want to look at things differently.

 

So that's really who, who I work with.  And who finds most value from working with me? 

 

Jessica Fowler: Can you share what the six components are?

 

Kim McLaughlin:  The six components are physical, emotional, mental, lifestyle,  mindfulness. And the sixth one is self-love. So, it's really looking at all of those six components. And what we find is that when people are overeating, binge eating, feeling out of control with food, one of those six components are out of balance.

 

Right. So, it's like, it's really putting those in balance. So, they all work together. So, every day you feel this sense of, um, peace with food and just peace. It's really more than that. It's peace with your life,  right? I mean, it's like, why do you put self-love in there? Well, when you're overeating and you don't like the way your body looks, you hate yourself. I literally have clients all the time. Tell me they hate themselves hate. And they hate their bodies and this, what I say is that when you hate yourself, you'll never have peace with food.  It doesn't work that way. We can't hate ourselves then we can't know.

 

Jessica Fowler: And what I liked in that part of the book. So, when you say self-love, I often think of compassion and you talked about that, right? It's kind of another word for it.  You know, I use that all the time as a starting point, working on compassion for ourselves. We can often give it to other people, but when we have to learn how to do it for ourselves, so whether it's food or anything else, just having that compassion can be such a window to healing whatever we're working on.

 

Kim McLaughlin: Yes. And it's interesting you say that because self-love I'll say kind of in jest, but it's really true is that I put self-love is the last chapter and really it should be first.  Really, it should be first because when we're full of self-love, when we're totally jazzing in our body, we're going to eat the right foods. We're going to feel wonderful. Our emotions are in line. Like there's all these things that go on. But, but the problem is, is that we don't always realize that. And so we, we recognize the physical because we can see the physical. We recognize the emotional because we can see it. And so the, the self-love is, is really what helps the glue, you know, that holds all those pieces together. And the more we focus on self-love, the more we're going to feel better in our lives. It's just, we don't know how to do it. And truthfully, what happens is, is we're so shamed in our society for having  a weight. I'm anybody who's, who's listening, I'm doing quotes weight problem, overweight, obesity, fat, whatever it is. And what I'll say is I don't know what that is. Like I, you know, everybody has this idea about what a normal weight is. What is normal? I don't know. All I know is that does your body feel good? Do you feel good getting up in the morning and go, I can do the things that I want to do. I feel fine. I don't care what the number is on the scale. It's whether you feel good in your body. That's what I'm looking for. But we've been, um,  trained to think that we have to look a certain way and we've all bought into it.

 

Jessica Fowler:  Yeah.

 

Kim McLaughlin: And I'm just helping you buy out of it, right. Buy out of that idea that you have to look a certain way because I will never look like  whoever  I'm short and I'm curvy, like, I'm never going to look like somebody who's tall and slender. That just isn't my body, but my body is the way it is. And  in terms of self-love, I want to appreciate my body exactly as it is. So, then I can feel better about myself. And then I act differently and I feel differently.

 

Jessica Fowler: Well, I, I see why you put it last, right? Because it's that idea of here are the things that might be able to.  Connect with first, right? It's easier to see or feel. And one of the things about the physical part that I liked that you put in there too, was that idea of being connected with your body. Right.  And you know, with intuitive eating, even just recognizing how you feel after something and your point of nourishing your body, like, do I feel good after I eat this what's going on for me right now?

 

Kim McLaughlin: Yeah. It's interesting because there's this phenomenon that happens when we overeat is, is this, I think of it, that idea of being outside of your body,  because there's this point where we overeat and we're just not connected. Right, not connected inside and just eating and not connected. And then when you get overly full, then there's this kind of I described as a shroom where you kind of come back to your body go, Oh, oh, right. And, and, and so that's where in that middle part is connected with your body, connected with your emotions, connected with mindfulness. And, and there's a lot of those pieces that come in  that help us have more, um, uh, peace with food. And those are things that, that, that are not a diet. It's  not a diet, right? It's about being more intuitive inside of your body about what's going on.

 

Jessica Fowler: Yes.  The other thing I really liked, um, about this book is the end of the chapter, so the reflection,  and then also your, um, writing prompts that you had. I think that those could be very helpful.

 

Kim McLaughlin:  Those are super helpful. It's once again, I'm a therapist. Uh, you know, I like insight, but I also like, we got to get our feet moving. We got to do something. And one of my primary methods is journaling because it gets it out of my head. On to the paper, and it's a really good thing to do to get more clarity right to get more clarity about what's going on.

 

The other thing is that for those of you who get the book and I hope you do, is that there is a link in there to get more. more doables from, um, so there's kind of this bonus. If you get the book, you can get, um, sign up to get these, um, these freebies that are helping you work on the book more. So, um, I appreciate that you notice those things at the end. Those are just something that I, you know, I always think like we've got to have, we've got to have something to do, or it's just the information just kind of sits there. And, and truly when it comes about food is we come to the table three times a day, at least.  Right. And if we come to the table three times a day, then there's at least three times a day where we're feeling disconnected  and there's, right.

 

And there's something literally we could do to be more connected. And, and truthfully, actually, you know, the, the coming to the table is the, the point of the food, but there's all the thoughts behind it, right. All throughout the day, whatever I'm going to eat today, can I eat today? How much have I had too much?

 

All those things coming on. That are there throughout the day, and then it shows up when we sit down  when we sit down, so to speak. Right. So, it's, it's a, um,  it's something that's constantly on our mind. And I want you to be able to have a little something, something to do different. 

 

Jessica Fowler: What would you say, who should be picking up your book? Like, who is this for?

 

Kim McLaughlin: Okay. So, one of the things.  That's a really good question.  Obviously people who struggle with food, anybody who struggles with food, this is a really good book to, um, to get you more in alignment. You know, people that have had, uh, bariatric surgery  really struggle after the surgery with what to do about food. And so this would be a great book for that, for anybody. And if you're on a diet and you're not sure if it's working for you, it'd be a great book to pick up. The other thing I think of is really any listeners that are therapists. Because we sometimes therapists lead people in the wrong direction. I hear a lot of stories about therapists recommending diets, therapists recommending  how to eat. I remember one therapist, bless him, is that I was telling him what I did and he literally said to me, well, why don't you just tell them to put their hands behind their back and shut their mouth. Like he literally, this was a therapist, you guys, this was a therapist. It was like,  Oh, wow. Um, right. So, what happens is, is that we have, we can have our own negativity or fear or shame around righteous therapists around food. So, this is a great way to start checking yourself. Right. He needed to, he needed to check himself. Right. But we need to check ourselves about what is our vision about food and how are we talking about food with our clients? And if we have any kind of food issues, what are we doing with that?  Right. 

 

Jessica Fowler: That makes sense too, because right it doesn't have to be an eating disorder, but often, right, we see a range of things that are in our office, a range of things that people want to work on and eating for many is one of them, right? S,o like I said, it doesn't have to be an eating disorder, but are there ways and tools that we can help someone? Um.

 

Kim McLaughlin: That's a really good, that's actually a really good point is that it's, I'm certified as an eating disorder counselor. So, I, I know all of that and absolutely anorexia bulimia. Um, um, binge eating that's out of control. Refer out, please refer out, really, really refer out to a specialist because, um, it is not, if it's not your specialty, you really can do harm. You really can do harm. And, and there are some eating disorders. That are super deadly. Yeah. Super deadly. So please refer out if you don't hear anything you hear that is refer out, but there are a lot of people that will come into your office that don't have a diagnosable eating disorder and don't  even want that but but to have something that you go, Oh, I remember Kim said this thing.

Right. That, uh, um, self-love is the most, you know, the self-love is the most, I wonder if I could work with them on this.  Right. And, and so you don't have to be an eat, have an eating disorder diagnosis to have food issues. 

 

Jessica Fowler: Right. Absolutely. What would you say is one or two things you would like the readers of your book to walk away with?

 

Kim McLaughlin: I really would like people to recognize that they don't have to keep doing it the same way they did before about food and dieting, because there's this pattern that happens and probably most of your listeners know this or read about it is that, you know, there's this,  there, it's a circle and at the top of the circle is restricting dieting you move around the circle becomes binging and you move around again to the circle and it's shame. And the only way we know how to deal with that shame about overeating and feeling bad about our body and hating our body is we come back up to the top and we diet again and we restrict again and we go in that cycle over and over again. And what I hope is that you just kind of point out the idea, like maybe we could hop off of that cycle. Maybe we could hop off of it and just kind of introduce the idea of wondering, because there is, uh, um,  the, the dieting industry is huge.  Billions and billions and billions of dollars. And so, there's this industry that wants us to keep buying something that doesn't work  overall over the long term. But they want to keep buying it. So, if you could talk and if you could think about getting off of that cycle, that would be good. And also that's one thing two. The second would be is that really embracing people that their body is okay.  The size of your body is fine,  your body's okay,  and that you are okay, you are not your body, and to really disconnect from this idea that I am unlovable. I am ashamed. I feel guilty, I feel bad because my body. Is not the size that I think I'm supposed to be, or that that diet culture says I'm supposed to be, or that the media says I'm supposed to be. And so, or my family says I'm supposed to be right.  But really help people embrace that their body is fine the way that it is and, and come back into that, to that idea of self -love. For their body. 

 

Jessica Fowler: And say, what a great message to end on  just love ourselves as we are. Um, thank you so much for being on the podcast today. I really appreciate it. Where can our listeners find your book and find you?

 

Kim McLaughlin: They can find me at feedyoursoulunlimited.com. And there is a, on the, on the bar on top, you can just check books. And you can get my book there. Um, I would love to have you guys recommend it. Let people know, let me know what you think about it. Um, and there's a contact Kim portion on feedyoursoulunlimited.com. 

 

Jessica Fowler: Excellent. Thank you so much.

 

Kim McLaughlin: Thank you, Jessica. I really appreciate it. 

 

Jessica Fowler: Thank you so much for listening to this week's episode of what your therapist is reading. Make sure you head on over to the website or social media to find out if there's a giveaway going on.  The information provided in this program is for educational and informational purposes only, and although I'm a social worker licensed in the state of New York, this program is not intended to provide mental health treatment and does not constitute a patient therapist relationship.

 

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Episode 06: Jessica Helmka, LADC/MH