Quote · On Purpose with Jay Shetty
CAMILA MENDES: "Perfectionism Was Ruining My Life"
Where this was said
Healing Your Relationship with Food
At 45:44 · chapter starts 44:35
Camila describes the treatment approach that worked for her: a specialist eating disorder therapist and a nutritionist operating as a coordinated team, addressing the psychological and physiological dimensions simultaneously. [1] — Camila Mendes "Camila's nutritionist slowly reintroduced carbs — starting with a single piece of toast — and the binge-purge cycle stopped. The deprivatio…" 44:35 The nutritionist's strategy was counterintuitive — reintroduce the forbidden foods very slowly. Start with a piece of toast in the morning. Camila was terrified: that's going to make me gain weight. But the nutritionist's logic was airtight: the reason Camila was binging and purging was that she was so deprived of carbs that when she walked past craft services on set she'd lose control. Remove the deprivation, remove the binge. And it worked. Permission to eat something made her not want it quite so desperately. She healed in roughly a year — something she genuinely didn't believe was possible. The broader principle Jay draws out from this is an ancient wisdom: attachment and aversion are two sides of the same coin. The extreme restriction created the extreme compulsion.
Camila's nutritionist slowly reintroduced carbs — starting with a single piece of toast — and the binge-purge cycle stopped. The deprivation was the engine of the disorder. When the forbidden food was no longer forbidden, the compulsion evaporated. She was effectively healed in about a year.
Working with a therapist specializing in eating disorders and a nutritionist simultaneously, Camila says she was effectively cured of bulimia in approximately one year.
