Helping you arrive to health freedom.
Even before finding my path to wellness and ending emotional eating, there was a high-achieving, type A perfectionist who prided herself on being busy and always taking on more than I could handle. “The more I push, the better” I would think, telling myself that my hard work ethic and drive were who I was, it was ingrained in me, and I thrived off of that.
Except I wasn’t thriving. I was struggling, massively.
I was continually setting the bar higher and higher for myself, and wanted to “be perfect” in all areas of my life including health. There’s a slippery slope when you’re forcing yourself to be 100% with diet and exercise, and as even a young adult, I found myself going down the tumultuous road that would include numerous eating disorders, a disconnect in my relationship between food, mind and body, and health scares including hospitalization.
It seemed with each new chapter, stressor, or change in my life, I would yo-yo between poor eating behaviors, my weight, and my overall health. When my world changed, the one constant I could control that became my crutch, was my disordered eating habits. This continued for decades as I just used food, over-exercise and a negative body image to cope with any emotion or any life shift I was going through.
As I moved professionally into the healthcare field, I would tell myself again and again that ‘I SHOULD be able to take care of myself,’ because I cared for others for my career. But as the years went on, this stigma just sent me further into a pattern of secrecy, shame, and guilt for the eating challenges that I was still suffering through.
When I became a Physician Assistant, I was determined to start off on the right foot with my wellness goals and desired so immensely to be free from food. The great responsibility of becoming a healthcare provider however, was stressful. I was working long hours, everything was new, and I could feel the pressure I was placing on myself. So those old tendencies started to creep back in… but, it was different this time.
I had witnessed the power of community, accountability and support just prior to that, and I was beginning to open my mind to the fact that it was “ok” to reach out for help. I had struggled far too long, and now I was committed to not going down that same path yet again. I saw colleagues having complete transformations in their lives, just by finding a mentor who knew how to guide them.
So I began to think, why do I keep trying to go at this alone?
I started out on my journey of healing my mindset, relationship with eating, and my body dysmorphia. I was finally in a committed space where I released all of my preconceived thought processes and patterns of what or who I thought I needed to be. And most of all, I let go of my perfectionism. This set free an entirely different perspective of nutrition, of my life and my purpose and vision for it. I set out on a true quest to find deeper wellness for myself.
I realized from years of my eating struggles, that while it was of utmost importance to transform my mind, that I also needed to heal my body too. I needed to finally give it the love and respect that was neglected for most of my adult life. The universe works in mysterious ways and afforded me the opportunity to learn about Functional Medicine, where I was able to continue my health journey of healing both inside and out.
I believe that sometimes we are meant for a certain path - obstacles, hardships and all, because it brings us to our ultimate mission. I was meant to go through my pain, to arrive at where I am today - finally thriving and now able to dedicate the rest of my life to serving others with similar struggles, by helping them to arrive at that same freedom.
Once you’ve broken through to find that passion and joy, you want to share it with as many as you can. That’s who I am and who I always was, I just had to realize my dream in order to get there.
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Amber Bender
Founder of Amber Bender Wellness