The Livy Method Podcast - You Don't Have to Hate Yourself Thin: Sandra Elia on Body Image & What Actually Works

Episode Date: June 3, 2026

Sandra Elia has lost 100 pounds. She's written a book on food recovery. She's built a program that's helped thousands of women. And she'll be the first to tell you that getting to your goal weight doesn't fix the way you feel about yourself. That part takes different work.In this conversation, Gina sits down with food addiction specialist and author Sandra Elia (Never Enough) to talk about the part of the weight loss journey nobody wants to discuss: body image. They get into how self-hate acts as a barrier to change and why thinness became morally coded in our culture.Where to Find Sandra:Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/sandraelia.ca/Website: https://www.sandraelia.com/ To purchase Sandra's book, Never Enough: Three Pillars of Food Addiction Recovery: https://amzn.to/46Qi1KcThis episode aligns with day 45 of our Spring 2026 weight loss program. You can find the full video hosted at: www.facebook.com/groups/livymethodspring2026To learn more about The Livy Method, visit livymethod.com. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

I'm going to be honest with you, this podcast is unapologetically a hot mess because that is what midlife feels like sometimes. Why, though? And how do we make it better? Do we all just need facelifts and g-lp-1s? I mean, let's talk about it. No bullshit, no wellness wankery here because we're trying to make real change and change is hard. But we're in this together. Welcome to the Living Method podcast.

Charlie is joining us today. She is the author of the book, Never Enough. She is also the founder of the Food Addiction Recovery Program here in Canada. Hi, welcome back. Hello, happy spring. It's warm. The sun is out. Life is so good.

Finally. You know, it truly is. And Sandra and I were just having a conversation behind the scenes about like, what should we talk about today? And she's been here before and talked about, you know, what is food addiction? And we really had an opportunity to get into that. and those conversations are stored in the app if you're looking to give those a watch or, of course, available on our podcast if you want to download and listen. But yeah, it is a great time of year.

However, it means short shorts and sleeveless tops. And, you know, that can play a number on our head, especially when we're trying to get more in tune with our body. You know, how we look is interfering with sometimes how we're feeling because we could be following the program, feeling fantastic, feeling really good about ourselves. and then, you know, how we look takes over. Maybe we can start with body image since one of our members asked to discuss body image, specifically around learning how to focus on how our body feels as opposed to how it looks. Oh, I have so much to say.

I'm so excited. I don't even know where to get started. Let me roll up my sleeves. First of all, when did it become a moral feeling to have a larger body? This, to me, is crazy. So just recently, Sports Illustrated did their swimsuit model show. I don't know if you caught it, but they had different sizes, different ages, different backgrounds. Yes, let's just look at some real bodies for a change.

Yes. And it's really tough because so many of us grew up in the era of fitness. Thinness was everything. And it wasn't just a look. Thinness was coded for us as intelligence, as discipline. as desirability and even virtue. And when I couldn't achieve thinness, I quietly decided I actually didn't have those qualities. And it begins to shape who you are and how you show up in the world.

But the truth is, is just the beliefs of our culture, right? It just wherever you happen to grow up, if you need a good boost, go to another country where different sites, like, I mean, I go to Jamaica. I feel like a million, like people are just bowing down to me. I just came back from Istanbul. I was like, I'm the shit in Istanbul right here. I'm considered, you know, a larger body, but not in other parts of the world. So I think that you have to change the glasses that you're wearing.

So I have a good friend, and she does TV every once in a while. And I'll call her, they, oh, my God, I sat on TV. And she's like, I looked terrible. terrible and my hair was out of mess and this was and I'm like you know what rewatch it and put on a new pair of glasses she doesn't wear glasses these are metaphorical glasses that allow you to see everything that is beautiful and right and gorgeous about yourself and you have to have the courage to see that and surround yourself with people who reflect that back to you I'm not interested in hanging out with people who talk about waist sizes and, you know, lack of cellulate, I want to hang around

really strong, beautiful, confident women who own their jiggle and own their cellulite and own it all. I remember after losing 100 pounds and getting divorced, I started dating this guy. I don't know if I've told this story, but I started dating this guy. We were three months in, and then he invites me to the Cayman Islands. I wanted to break up with him. I'm like, you crazy? This is going so well. And you want to take me somewhere where you're going to see me in the bikini in daylight. But luckily I had a great mentor who taught me to go by the best bathing suits you have money for, put them on, throw your shoulders back and walk that beach. Like it's the runway. And people weren't confused because they're like, why is this girl strutting?

She's got cellulite, saggy skin, stretch marks. Does she know? Yeah, I do know. But I want to make it okay for other women with stretch marks and cellulite to stretch and to feel good in their bodies. Weight loss, I think that when you grew up in the diet culture, a lot of us have in our heads a goal weight, this weight where everything is going to work out for us. Yeah. All of our life is going to change. Yes. I equated to the lottery effect.

So what we know from people who win the lottery is they think, great, I won the lottery. All my, all my problems are going to go away. life is going to be sweet and life is going to be great. But people actually one year after winning the lottery return to their baseline happiness. So if they were happy people, they continue to be happy people. If they were kind of, you know, like, I don't want to say miserable, but you know what I mean? They must be miserable even after they win the lottery. And why it's called hedonic adaptation.

So at first you have this huge high, you feel amazing. But then you just return to baseline. and I believe weight loss sometimes follows that same curve if we don't work on loving ourselves exactly as we are. You get your goal weight and that happened to me in my 20s, no, in my early 30s, I got to my goal weight and like the lowest weight I'd ever been since grade 7. And I'll never forget that moment sitting in my condo going, nothing changed. The love of my life didn't show up.

I didn't get the promotion. I'm not on a yacht. But nothing changed. And it was such a hard, sad moment for me. And it brought a relapse back. And the reason it brought back that relapse was because I wasn't measuring anything else. I wasn't measuring that I ran a half marathon that I started a spiritual retreat that I had never been healthier. I never had better energy. None of that mattered. Yeah. The only thing I was measuring was the number. And I got the number and then nothing changed. Yeah. So I think, I don't know if I answered the question because I went off in a tangent. I know. We love a good tangent around here. You know, I think maybe, you know, maybe some, maybe some strategies as Sandra for that because I think what's great about what you did there is we can see ourselves in what you were saying. And, you know, I think this is sort of where the body positivity movement was really great. Unfortunately, a lot of it was tied into weight. And what we say here is you can love yourself right now as you are today and still want to make change.

But it's that loving yourself and accepting yourself that, you know, that when did your weight become like sort of your moral compass goes back to like 1918 and Lulu Peters and, you know, with what was happening with the war and and trying to ration food. So if you were seen as a woman in a larger body, it meant that you couldn't control yourself because you couldn't follow your rations. that were being reserved for the war. Yeah. And so that moral compass thing runs really deep. And then we know so many of our members, for example, their moms didn't know any better, sign them up for Weight Watchers when they're 12 years old.

That sort of like that your body is not good enough as it is goes really, really deep. Do you have strategies for breaking that? Or is it just exposure therapy? Like is it coming on the bikini and going to the beach? Do you have strategies? for helping to navigate that. What we know is that, so basically this program, most of our programs is about behavioral change, right?

We're trying to change our behaviors around food. We're trying to change our behaviors around movement. So it is very hard to change when motivated by shame, guilt, or self-hate. So if you are shameful about your body, if you have guilt about your body, if you have this negative person in your head constantly hating you, the chances of changing your behavior are very, very low. So the root to changing is actually love and acceptance today. Self-hate will drain you of motivation and energy. And how much energy do you need?

I don't know about you. I need a lot of energy just to live my life, let alone try to change things. So it is actually the foundation that allows change to be possible. Self-love, love is energizing. That's why women can have infants that will take all our sleep away and take away all of our reasons. Why? Love. But we have the energy to be up around the clock because we have unconditional love for this little creature.

We need that unconditional love for ourselves. At the end of the day, I just don't want to be on my rocking chair. What if I never get back to that grade seven weight? What if I never do? Does that mean from now, for the rest of my days, I'm going to lament. I'm going to hate. I'm going to wish. I'm not going to buy. I'm not going to do. Like, no, because that could happen. And I'm sure this happens to you. I do work with women in their 70s who tell me they've, you know, they've felt guilty their entire lives. They wake up every morning. They're like,

is it keto, high fat, low fat? Is it paleo? And my eating. And every meal is latent with guilt because they just feel guilty eating and they've never accepted their body. And now they're kind of in their last chapter of life. What? What happened? What does this cost me? Sometimes we don't even know the cost because we don't have a life where we did love and accept ourselves to compare it to. So when you stop waiting and you start loving the life you have today, these behaviors become more available. Why? Because food takes its rightful place. Food is not the consolation prize anymore. food for me for like i would say oh 15 20 years it was the consul i don't have a boyfriend but i get to eat i'm not going to buy the dress but i'll go home and just binge and feel numb afterwards

if i'm living that life anyways then food can maybe take its rightful place do you do journal sandor do you are you do you put your feelings down somewhere like do you have a process for kind of processing your feelings yeah i do journal i don't journal as much so i'm a spiritual seeker. And so you name it. I've done it. And I do things, I usually do things between three and five years at a spurt. And then I find a new modality. So my new modality of healing right now is actually indigenous healing. And so my teacher has taught me, and this will be really helpful for your community, that any thought that is not kind, loving, or supportive is not your thought. That is not your higher self.

any thought that puts you down or criticizes you does not belong to you. And in fact, you could just say no. So he taught me a little three-steper that I love. I've been using it all the time. So when you have an intrusive thought about food or an intrusive thought of hate or whatever, you can actually go, no. You say no. You take a big breath.

And that breath is bringing in the source. And then he says, shift your body to shift it. because that helps shift your mind. And I'm doing that all day long. I'm just like, as soon as that, no, even if I'm fighting with a sister or whatever, I bring that in and it works. There's something about shifting my body, whether it's bringing out of my arms or anything like that.

So, yeah, I think whether it's journaling, I have been a spiritual seeker, but what I do is I take whatever spiritual learnings and then I apply it to my relationship with food because that's been my lifelong struggle and my relationship to my body. So whatever, whether it was ayahuasca, whether it was the course of miracles, whether it was Buddhism, whatever it was, I took those principles and I brought it back to food. Yeah, they're all practices, right? That's what you're doing here asking those four sets of mindful eating questions before you eat, that sense of awareness. Okay, can I just back it up because I fucking love what you just said there that any negative thought is not yours. That's, that's, that's, that's, that's, that's, that's, you know,

other people's perception. That's, any negative thought is not yours and you do not have to accept that. I love Dr. Beverly's capture, cancel corrected. That's helpful helpful for rewiring your brain. In the moment, just say no. No. Just brilliant. I don't give permission to this intrusive thought. No, you are, or fuck off. Like, I love that we can swear. This is the only podcast. I got to go give a presentation for Novo Nardis afterwards right after this and I can't swear. I'm going to get it all out now. No, seriously, that is absolutely brilliant. It can be just as simple as that. And I love that the shaking of your body is sometimes we take things in and we internalize them. And that's like, no, I'm not, that's not a thought I'm holding onto. I'm not, I'm not

hanging onto that. Mine is mine. That's yours is yours and that is not mine at the end of day. I love that. Absolutely not your higher self. If you believe in God, that's not God's thoughts. Like if you believe in whatever it is, that's, that's just garbage thinking. Do not allow free rent of garbage thinking in your mind. Yeah. Garbage thinking. I'm just, I'm just, if I look a little distracted, because I'm trying to keep my eye on all of the comments here. And I see one, okay, so I see one here that is about refuse. So, Trudy, if you don't mind. She says, I refuse to wear short shorts. Caprice are okay. but no shorts for me.

And then later on is talking about I have so many negative thoughts about my body, even this morning waking up and looking in the mirror, telling myself that even my face is showing my weight. It's constant reminders everywhere. And that's what I mean about the summer. It's hot. If you don't like shorts, short shorts, don't wear them, obviously. But not because you don't like the way that you look. That can be all consuming.

And so if we take the practice of like that's, that's capture that, cancel that, correct, it's not true. But if we really don't like the way our body looks, like I don't like my nose. It doesn't matter. I can self love self love myself to death. And I will probably never love my nose. Not it. I'm not going to go change it. But there are features about ourselves that sometimes we cannot change. And so how do we, I get the negative thoughts, but how do we just is the pattern of constantly? dwelling and focus on it. How do we change our attitude about that? Yeah. So first about the short shorts. I agree. It's all about perspective. So she can attach any meaning that she wants to it. I don't wear short shorts. Well, maybe you don't want to wear short shorts. Like I no longer wear things that are not stretchy. I could decide that that means, you know, my body doesn't fit into normal sizing or I'm 53 and I'm not wearing shit that's not stretchy anymore. I feel comfortable. Yeah. So whatever meeting you attach.

Then with the looking in the mirror. So I call that sitting in the cheap seats. Like the people that just throw mud and throw, and you're doing it to yourself, right? Yes. Yeah. So I always say I'm only interested in high-end love. Cheap love. This is what cheap love is.

When I look good, I say all the right things, I do everything that pleases you and you love me. Whatever. Sure. That's cool. High-end love. is when I look a mess, I make a mess and I fall down and someone says, I got you and I love you and I see everything that's good about you. That's the only kind of love I'm interested in. So it does take courage not to get up and throw mud at yourself. You would never do it to another

human, but you're doing it to yourself. And the price tag that you're paying to throw mud at yourself, you show up in the world different, your eyes don't sparkle, your shoulders slosh. then here's the worst part because this happened to me in my 20s. The way I felt about myself was reflected back to me in relationships. Yeah. In circumstances. Every room I went in, it's hard to believe if you had met me in my 20s, Gina, you would have said what everybody said to me.

You have the saddest eyes I've ever seen. Like, I can't even believe that that was how people described me. And all I ever got back were people who put me down, relationships that were awful, work that didn't value me. And I used to think you're all jerks and you're all discriminating against me because I'm fat, right? Like you all have fat to me. And then I was a really good experiment. I worked at the same consulting firm for 15 years. So they hired me at what you would consider a normal weight. Then they watched me gain 100 pounds. Then they demoted me. They put me in the back. They put me on a different floor. Like, what are we going to do with Sandra?

Then I went on short term sick leave, came back, lost 100 pounds. So those people who were so interesting, they started treating me differently. Yeah. And they were kinder. And the easy answer is they're assholes. And they didn't treat me well when I was bigger, but now they'll hold a door open for me. But that's not the answer. They were literally reflecting back to me.

Yeah. What I felt for myself. So I'll give you a little funny example of this because we both know Zana and she won't mind me telling this story. So she met me just before I went to sick leave. And then later, she's like, oh, my God, I just love you. When I first met you, I thought you were such a bitch. I was like, no, I wasn't.

I was so angry at myself and I hated myself. And all I saw was the worst in me. And that's all I could put out in the world. So you can put those to the person who looks in the mirror. You can stop paying that price right now. You can choose the higher end love. You can choose to have that courage. Yeah, it's what your focus on is what you're seeing.

And that it takes work to change what you are focused on. You know, I had a, I spoke to a psychic the other day. Oh, fun. I'll get in later. And I was just talking about worry. I'm always worried. I'm worried that I'm going to go backwards. I'm worried I'm going to ruin everything.

And she's like, honey, you are too old. Like that's not your life path at this point. And she's like worrying. You have nothing to worry about. You've created worry in your brain. Like you've just created worry in your brain. It's the way your brain is wired. So you are constantly worrying.

And it's true. I used to feel it as waiting for the other shoe to drop. Yeah. And that was from a learned behavior from a past relationship. I was with someone who constantly sat. Every time something went well, there was sabotage. And so look at it. I got major issues with it coming up.

my God. And so I used to think that was like the other shoe to drop feeling went away. But then there's still another feeling under that shoe to drop. And it was like this constant worry or dread that whatever. And then just having her say that to me was like, yeah, oh my gosh. And so now I, now that you, when you see it, you can't unsee it. And then I'm like, what am I doing? I'm choosing to worry when in reality there's actually nothing to worry about, but I can pick things

and make things and see things to worry. I can pull that into my vision. So that's what I have to And it becomes your now. Yeah. And Tony would be like, Gina, you have this, you have that, you have this, you have this, you have this, you have this, all these amazing things going on in your life. And you choose to pick the one thing that isn't really a thing to worry about. Like, that's like it's and it is the way your brain is wired. So it just want to say it takes once you recognize it, it takes time and you have to keep saying no or you have to keep saying no. Okay, capture cancel it. You have to you have to be aware. Oh, such great. I love about worry. So this is my concept about worry. Worry is always future thinking because if you're in this present moment with us in

this moment, we're all okay. We're all safe. We all have everything we need all as well. in this moment. The only time we can worry is in the future. Because if something was happening right now, we wouldn't be worried about it. Yeah. We would be dealing with it. We would be actually fixing it because that's what we do is women. We just fix the problem when it comes up, but worry happens in the future. And so my daughter taught me something very interesting this weekend, last weekend. We went to see Bruno Mars at Rogers Stadium. So Roger's Stadium is at Downsue Park. and it's very hard to get in and out. And the toilets were port of bodies.

And I'm just bitching and moaning through the whole thing. And she turns to me and she said, mom, this is someone's dream concert. They've saved up all year for this. And you're just complaining about the grounds. And that's true, right? So your nose could be someone's dream nose. Yes, yeah. And that woman who looks in the mirror, that her body could be someone else's dream body.

And for myself, when I was in my 20s and all I could do was walk 15 minutes. because of my lower back pain, I hated myself. I was embarrassed. I'm 20. I should be able to do more. And when I flip the switch to today, there's 20-year-olds all over the world who cannot get out of it. Yeah. Be grateful that I can walk 15 minutes.

And then the 15 minutes turned to 30 minutes turned to 5K, 10-K, half marathon. But here's the deal. That half, from 15 minutes to half marathon to seven or eight years. But nobody wants to hear that story because that's not sexy. That doesn't sell books. No. Couch potato and a half full marathon in 30 days. Nobody's reading a book 15 minutes to half, half a marathon.

That's like half a failure in seven years. But that's actually what it looks like. Yeah. That's what change looks like. It takes so much longer, Sandra, than what people realize. And, you know, we have these 91 day kind of like motivational live sessions. But the reality is people's journey continue, right? That's one of the things that we're offering with our new membership is people can have that support in between programs.

And I just spoke to someone yesterday where they were like, well, I did the last session and I did this. And it was amazing. And this one I'm really struggling. And I don't know. I should probably give up. And I'm like, no, that, this is the work for you. This, this. It's not so often it's not the physical what you eat and when peace.

It's the mental part is the work. Okay. You also have a course that you're offering that's coming up on. June 20 seconds. Before I get into that, though, I got some questions that I want to ask. So I get four or five questions. We got about four or five minutes. So just you can go deeper into them next time or in your course. But I'm curious as to why I cannot let go of senseless carbs. Because they're addictive. Because they've been chemically engineered to overwhelm your reward center. And it's not your fault. No one can eat them reasonably. And if you have a susceptibility, to addictive eating, forget it. It's like the alcoholic saying, why can't I stop it one glass of wine? Because you can't. Okay. What if you have someone, if you have food addiction issues, you know, and you have a habit of snacking at night, if it's your husband. And even though you're trying really hard to kind of break that habit, he keeps sabotaging you, sabotaging you. What do you do

if people are trying to sabotage you on your journey? Okay. So if my recovery depends upon everybody behaving in my environment being perfect, I'm dead in the water. So we have to accept that people are going to eat in front of us, that we're going to have birthday cake show up when it's not our birthday and we have to stay true to our own plan. The only person's, it's only my job to make sure I have everything I need and I'm safe. It's no one else's job. I used to have a fiance that ate Dorito chips in the bed. I would wake up with Dorito shrapnel in my hair, even though it was a trigger food for me. what are you going to do? Yeah.

Yeah. Okay. Yeah. I love that. I love that. It's hard. And sometimes people are just there to message, like as a message or as a challenge to you and, you know, okay.

Or just ask for help. Like just say, you want to do that for a little bit. Will you be willing to help me? Give it a timetable because everybody's like, for the rest of my life, I can't eat Doritos. Can you just help me out for six weeks to get on steady ground? Yeah. I was just going to say the same.

A conversation. sometimes, right? Just sharing how you feel and asking for help. Most people want to help. I've discovered that refined sugar is my enemy and trigger. Do you have suggestions on how to navigate day-to-day life without it? I think I'm doing okay. Then wham, someone offers me a home-baked treat and then they feel out of control. So take it one day at a time, one meal at a time. When we think about for the rest of our lives, we're never going to do this, then our self-efficacy goes down at zero. So I learned through Dr. Michael Valis, who's a fantastic psychologist in Nova Scotia, that the biggest predictor of behavioral change is something called self-epicacy, the belief that it's possible. So we have to keep it to one meal because when you say, look, for one meal, am I willing for lunch not to have sugar?

Your self-efficacy is going to be a 10 to 10. If I ask you, are you willing for the rest of your days, not to your self-efficacy is zero. Keep it to one day to time. do have one. I like the idea of a planned indulgence. So plan it, be present for it, enjoy every single morsel. And then, then determine, is it peaceful or not. So then after you have the planned indulgence, are you fighting cravings? Are you fighting hunger? Are you white knuckling for three days? You might decide that price tag is too much for that three minute indulgence that I had. Yeah. So just being aware. That's a good time to use journaling.

Okay. Love that. This is a great question. Can I still love food and have a food addiction? I consider myself in a foodie. I love to cook, but I'm also realizing I have a very unhealthy relationship with food. I think you actually need to love your food in order to recover, right? Because if your meals look like, you know, boiled chicken and Brussels, that's not sustainable forever. So you need to have a meal plan that you can comfortably sustain for the rest. of your life. I love food. I have to love food. I'm Italian. It usually be like, oh, this looks amazing and colorful and delicious. All I'm asking is that the food loves you back. If food is making you sick and bloated and shame spiral, then it's not loving you back. So pick foods

where it's mutually love. Love, love, love. Okay, amazing. People are commenting how much they love this conversation, right? It's resonating. It's resonating because it's real and you're real and we always love when you come on. Someone mentioned that they need to grab your book. You absolutely do. We will add a link to her book. It is called Never Enough, Three Pillars of Food Recovery. As I mentioned earlier, Sandra has a program starting on June 22nd. You can find more information and register at Sandra Elia. That's E-L-I-A dot com for more. information. Final words before you go. Oh my gosh. Just get out there this summer and enjoy. And I'm in my era where I am living life and just letting work be the secondary show. And that takes a lot of trust.

I am trusting that the universe that God has a plan for me and my job is to walk into it. So do that this summer. We don't get that many summers. We do not. Oh my goodness. And that's the struggle, right? We want to enjoy the summer because summer is so short and sweet, but we also want to feel good physically and feel good mentally. And that's that line of being able to have your margarita or, you know, whatever. I'll drink it too. Thank you so much for joining us again if you're interested in Sandra's program. It starts June 22nd. You can go to her website and check it out. You can also follow her on Instagram as well at Sandra Elia. Is that your Instagram account? Yeah.

Dot CA. Yeah. It's all Sandra. You're on the screen. Sandraelia. ca where she's always just sharing her heart and sharing great, amazing tips. Definitely worth a follow.

So give her a follow over there. I don't want this conversation to end, but it is time to go. Me either. Went too fast. I always appreciate. Thanks, everyone who's joining us live or listening after the fact. We appreciate you. Thanks.

Thanks, Sandra. Thank you.