About Jessica Thiefels
Jessica Thiefels (she/her) is the founder and CEO of Echeveria Organic, host of Nope, That’s Not Normal, and a published author. After going through her own disordered eating and trauma-healing journey—and spending more than 13 years working in content marketing—she now helps mental health and eating disorder recovery organizations amplify their message with authentic and intentional content marketing. Follow her on Instagram at @JessicaThiefels and @NopeThatsNotNormal.
Can you share a pivotal moment in your body image healing journey that shifted the way you saw yourself?
I think a pivotal moment in that shifted the way I saw myself is (actually, there's of course been so many), but the one that really sticks out just recently happened. Someone who I follow on Instagram, who talks a lot about body neutrality, body positivity. I really like her voice and the way that she approaches it. She was talking about seeing old pictures of herself and, like me, she was in the health and fitness profession when she was younger. And so her body reflected that. Someone had asked her, how do you see old pictures of yourself and not feel that intense body grief? And she said, I just see it as an old version of myself.
And I just love every version that I've been in, every version that I will be. And I just love that version of myself as much as I love this. And that sounds really not groundbreaking, but I think there was something about it that helped me see and helped me understand that I can look at that version of me and know it's okay if I feel grief and sadness, but also that I can love that and love her for everything that she was going through. And, you know, I know life wasn't as good as it seems or as I think that it might have been, and I can just love her and send her love and let that just be it, you know? So I don't know. For some reason, that was really impactful for me, that shift.
What emotions were the hardest for you to sit with as you worked through disordered eating, and how did you learn to navigate them?
The biggest emotion that I didn't always recognize what it was at the time, but now looking back, I can really see that came up as I worked through a lot of this in the depths of my initial healing was a lot of grief.
Grief around what I felt I was losing. The things that felt like I was losing control. My body not looking the way that it did meant feeling like I was worth less, you know, less lovable. Grieving my identity as quote-unquote “the healthy friend”, which I always was, which is what actually ultimately drove me to become a personal trainer.
A lot of grief, which I don't think talked about enough in this healing process that there is and we are allowed to experience deep grief around the loss of what felt so important and so tied to who we are as people.
For me, at the time, for the first, probably six months of doing this healing work, I think I was seeing my eating disorder therapist once a week. So it was a lot of just talking about it and her reminding me how normal it is, how natural it is, and understanding what that grief really meant. And just a lot of talking it through and allowing it to be present. One time, actually the first time, I got rid of a bunch of old jeans that just didn't fit. I was holding on to them, which shouldn't be, you know, whatever. And I just broke down crying, and I just let myself have that moment of, like, this is really hard.
Also, a lot of compassion was another big thing that my therapist and I worked on. In those moments when it felt really difficult, I really tried validating those feelings and validating that grief and reminding myself, “This is hard to let go of. That's okay. I see that you're really trying.”
How did societal or cultural expectations around body image influence your relationship with food, and how have you unlearned those messages?
I think growing up in the culture that a lot of us millennials specifically grew up in, around what you're supposed to look like.
Even just this past Christmas, I was watching Love Actually. I've watched that movie every year at Christmas time for like fifteen years, and I've never noticed the blatant body shaming that happened in it.
There’s one part where Hugh Grant says, “Would we call her Chubby?” I'd always known that part, but there's actually a lot of other parts in the movie where they’re making note of women's appearance and bodies not being “ideal.”
So there's so much that I took in that impacted me and I think it slowly edged me toward what ended up sort of pushing me over the edge, which was my healing journey. I had a lot of physical issues. I had worked with many different doctors. Done so many different things. Nothing worked. And I was then working with a naturopath and we were going to be doing a very restrictive diet and I knew in that moment: I'm gonna lose weight because I'm not drinking alcohol and I can only eat like a handful of foods for the next three months. This isn't going to be good, because then I'm probably going to gain it back. And I just instinctively knew, intuitively knew that it wasn't going to be good.
But I didn't have an option. I was like, I need to fix this. This is the way to do it. So I think all of that, all those messages and movies, and all the crap that we now see looking back that have been resurfaced, I think all of that just sort of primed me in terms of culture for when the time came. Because I always felt like I knew that I wasn't necessarily happy with my body and I had done some therapy around it, but it felt like quote-unquote “normal.” It felt like a normal amount of dislike for my body. I told myself everybody dislikes their body and everybody wants to be thinner, which of course, shouldn't be the case.
You know, we talk about this on Nope, That’s Not Normal. We talk about the things that are normalized that actually are not or should not be normal.
So I think all of that primed me for when the time came for me to significantly lose weight. Because of this “health protocol”, the waves just took me right under and I got fully sucked in.
What role did self-compassion play in your healing, and what advice would you give to someone struggling to be kind to themselves?
Self compassion is something I talk about so much, because it played a gigantic role in my healing. It was something that my therapist and I came back to again and again and again. In those moments, I would ask myself:
- Were you compassionate with yourself?
- Were you giving yourself love?
- Were you reminding yourself that this is hard?
It was everything. It was such an important part of moving through what is and what can be a really difficult healing process.
I heard this a decade ago, but it continues to be relevant for me is speaking to myself. Whether it's when I look in the mirror, when I notice that I’m being critical, I speak to myself the way my best friend or a loved one would or I think about how I would speak to them.
For me, I think a lot about my child. I have a three and a half year old and I think, how would I speak to him? I would speak to him so gently and so kindly and so lovingly.
That's been incredibly helpful for me for a long time. I literally had the voice of one of my close friends in my brain and I would think about what she would say to me, and that was incredibly helpful.
So that's something that we can sort of play with. And because if you're thinking about what someone would say to you, it might be easier because it feels like it's coming from someone else. You don't necessarily have to give yourself that compassion directly, even though you are. But we can sort of trick our brain into that habit of thinking more kindly in those moments.
How has your relationship with your body changed over time, and what does body acceptance look like for you today?
My relationship with my body has changed so much. It's hard to really answer that. But what I can say is body acceptance for me looks like a really strong awareness of when those voices come up that might want to tell me that something isn't right with my body, reminding myself that's not me, that's diet culture talking. That's not what I inherently believe. It's what I've been taught to believe that's been really helpful in terms of being okay. And honestly, this sounds kind of funny, but it's honestly just a lot of talking to myself. I regularly remind myself of how proud I am.
As I'm working out, I will say to myself multiple times, this isn't about how your body looks. This isn't about changing your body. This is about having fun. This is about building strength. This is about feeling strong to lift your three and a half year old and play with him and be active in life.
It's just a lot of self talk, a lot of support, a lot of reminders as things pop up. Like, the reality is we live in a world that's obsessed with diet culture and thinness and with the morality of being healthy, and that's never going away.
The way that I manage that when my own things come up or when I'm triggered or activated is just like really talking to myself constantly and just being really kind, Giving lots of reminders, kind of anchoring, grounding myself in what I know to be true.
One of the things I say a lot to myself lately is: My body is an instrument, not an ornament. That reminds me really quickly that it does not matter what my body looks like. That it’s the least interesting thing about me.
What do you wish more people understood about the emotional side of healing from disordered eating and body image struggles?
I talk about this a lot and I actually reference a lot of what Rae Thomas, Co-Founder of Feelings Found says, which is: “It's a little about food, it's a lot not. It's a little about body, it's a lot not.”
What I'm regularly reminding people of is your struggles with body image, your struggles with food, and all of that is just the surface level symptoms of what you are, what's unhealed within you, your trauma and pain, what you're yearning for, what you're desiring, wanting to feel worthy, or wanting to feel enough.
These are just the ways that we've learned to soothe that and make myself feel like we are in control or that we are worthy or that we are loved.
If you're not willing to go under the surface, I feel like you're going to have a very hard time creating an environment for yourself or inside of yourself and in your mind that supports long term peace and healing and recovery. So it's a non negotiable, if you want to really truly heal from that and come to a place where you can really feel joyful and peaceful around food in your body.
