While Laura McKowen is known for her work around alcohol sobriety, her first coping strategy was food.
Like Laura, I have many clients who come to me where their first “thing” was food. And after getting sober or soberish, their eating issues return or becomes a “thing”.
In this special Insatiable episode, we apply the wisdom Laura writes about in her new book to food, body image, and the overlap with alcohol.
We discuss:
- How Laura’s original coping mechanism was bingeing and the overlapping and distinct root causes between her food and alcohol struggles
- Why stopping bad habits like alcohol and battling food is different than starting new habits and how you change has to shift to what Laura discusses as “being willing to be led”
- Grief from the loss of using alcohol, food, and the fantasies they offer
- How wanting to be saved, desired, and chosen fueled Laura’s alcohol and body image issues and the deep work she did to heal and now be in a healthy relationship
- How Laura views sobriety as an invitation into a “Bigger Yes” (we also discuss the pushback at this suggestion and how it’s even more politically incorrect to say your body battle is an invitation into a “Bigger Yes”)
- The connection between eating disorders, alcohol use disorder, and sensitive, empathetic, and perceptive people (and their nervous systems), and where they need to push off too.
About Laura McKowen
She has written for The New York Times and has been featured in The Wall Street Journal, The Guardian, The Atlantic, the TODAY show, and more. In 2020, she founded The Luckiest Club, a global sobriety support community.
Laura lives with her daughter and partner on the North Shore of Boston.
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