64: Weight Neutral Approach in ED Peer Support with Meg Vardy

This is why I, for listeners listening to this episode, I... was a board member of Journey for about a year.

And the thing that really excited me when I first heard about what you were doing, and this comes back to what you're saying about reclaiming the word love, is you speak so beautifully about you knew your recovery absolutely rested on the love of your husband and your mum.

Yes.

When I was going through my eating disorder, which was bulimia, I found it very hard to find anyone who even would acknowledge that I was unwell, which is a very different experience.

But ultimately I got the support I needed through Coaches and people recovering in a very different way, but that support, that shared lived experience was an absolute, I wouldn't be, I don't know if I'd even be here, but I wouldn't have recovered in the way that I have today.

without that and to formalize that for people to, I just looked at that and went, oh my goodness, if that organization had been available to me 20 years ago, my life could have been taken a very different trajectory.

So thank you for

doing that.

I just wanted to pull that thread out that we don't have, and I know people recovering, we've talked about this spectrum from eating disorders to disordered eating to feeling body distress.

There is a group of people I know who feel very isolated and lonely in that, and peer support is just, value across the whole board so let's this episode really is about putting a focus on why is it why is a weight neutral approach important can you explain why putting weight aside like taking it off the table and and having a weight neutral approach within a peer support

system

is important

Yeah, absolutely.

So before I delve into that specific question, I'll just give a little overview of peer support as I'm talking about it.

Yes, please, please do.

I think there's a lot of different sort of interpretations of peer support.

When I'm talking about peer support, I'm talking about formalised peer support whereby people with lived experience walk alongside people experiencing mental distress Peer supporters are not there to fix, to diagnose, to solve, to provide medication.

They

are there to support an individual to identify what wellness looks like for them.

We're not there to define wellness for them.

We're there to support them to discover that for themselves and to walk alongside them on that journey to get them there.

I think it's important to kind of establish that as separate from recovery coaching, which is a different approach.

I'm

so glad you're distinguishing that for us because it's really, really vital distinction.

So