Victoria Kleinsman (00:01.198)
Well, queens, welcome to another podcast episode. And I have my amazing client with me today, Tara. So welcome to the podcast, Tara.

Tara Boyle (00:10.663)
Thank you, it’s a pleasure to be here.

Victoria Kleinsman (00:12.942)
I’m excited to hear your story because the reason I asked you to come on was for you to share where you were, where you are now, and to be an inspiration to others who recognise themselves in your journey. So if you can share with us what you were struggling with before you reached out to coaching and how long had that been going on before you reached out for support.

Tara Boyle (00:35.011)
Okay, if I’m honest with myself, I think I’ve had an issue with an eating disorder for about 30 years. I think it started as disordered eating. know, just very strange eating habits really, all I guess in an attempt after my first attempt at diet at 17.

Victoria Kleinsman (00:51.982)
Mm.

Tara Boyle (01:04.399)
to kind of stay in that smaller size that I got to. And I think it just, it got worse and worse and obviously at some point became full-blown anorexia. And I got to a quite dangerous level really just before I spoke with you. You know, there was, I’m not going to mention numbers, but there was no disputing that I was pretty, very, very slim, you know.

very underweight, obvious to the eye, underweight. But that wasn’t really the reason I reached out. The reason I reached out, which I didn’t realise was all part and parcel of the disorder anyway, was I think I spoke to you and I…

It was going through some real kind of spiralling in my mind at the time. Being very out of control, was being very overproductive, almost insanely overproductive, working crazy hours. And I felt like I couldn’t kind of stop that, but it was just this very strange habit I’d got into which was also making me thinner and thinner and thinner because of the stress and no time to eat. And I didn’t know what that was.

Victoria Kleinsman (02:14.136)
Mm-hmm.

Tara Boyle (02:19.591)
but I knew it was affecting me physically and at the time I think I just, I didn’t know if I could ever solve that because I didn’t know what that was, but I thought, well let’s try and, I’ve got two problems here, let’s try and solve one and then the other one might be easy to deal with, not actually realising they were all part of the same problem, which I then found out.

Victoria Kleinsman (02:27.607)
Yeah.

Victoria Kleinsman (02:39.525)
Yeah, from the same energy, the constant doing, the constant stress, the constant anxiety, the go, go, go. What have you found out you were avoiding from doing all of those behaviours?

Tara Boyle (02:53.999)
I think that it was around the time of my 50th birthday I’d kind of opened a bit of a wound. I’ve got to a point where I felt, you know, it’s kind of a milestone and you think what’s going to be different about my life for the next half than the first half.

Victoria Kleinsman (03:10.691)
you

Tara Boyle (03:12.167)
and a lot of what was the first half I think was a lot of secrets, a lot of hiding things and I just felt a little bit of a need to share with people some of the things that happened to me in the past and so I started to speak to friends about that in a way that I thought would kind of relieve some of that you know just make me feel a bit better about that. With no other expectations but I think I kind of opened a wound and then I went and ignored it. I kind of opened it and then thought well that’s good

Victoria Kleinsman (03:32.174)
Yeah.

Victoria Kleinsman (03:37.73)
Yeah.

Tara Boyle (03:42.073)
But I’ve spoken to people about what happened, that’s a step forward, and then stopped taking steps forward. I think what eventually happened was that by opening that wound, all of the kind of, I guess, hidden trauma just was screaming to get out. And I think that I was probably reacting to that. I just felt like, I think I said to you, felt like somebody was switching me on in the morning and switching me off at night and I had no control over it.

Victoria Kleinsman (03:49.326)
in.

Victoria Kleinsman (04:07.043)
Yeah.

Victoria Kleinsman (04:10.498)
Yes.

Tara Boyle (04:11.977)
like a puppet master pulling my strings constantly, know, somebody else had control. And I think from what I’ve learned with you that that’s usually can be a sign of trauma, that constant kind of those, you’re either in freeze, fight or flight, and are very much kind of emotionally was quite frozen, but physically was just constantly on.

Victoria Kleinsman (04:26.711)
Yep.

Victoria Kleinsman (04:33.388)
Yeah, to avoid, like you said, what you opened up, which needed to be opened up, what happened to you as a child in terms of capital T trauma, let’s put it that way. And I believe through coaching you and through our conversations, and I’m curious what you think about it when giving you the direct question, do you think that experience, those experiences you had as a child contributed to the onset of the anorexia?

Tara Boyle (04:58.983)
I mean, I’ll never know for sure, can’t go back in time, but I definitely, when we went back and kind of did inner child work, I went back and realised that I kind of had two significant traumas around the same time as a young person and the beliefs I think that formed around that time as a way I think to…

probably protect my family more than me was that I had to keep secrets, that I had to be good, I had to not upset anything. know, was my parents had lost a child, my brother around the same time as a different trauma that I had and I just knew that they…

Victoria Kleinsman (05:30.264)
Mm-hmm.

Tara Boyle (05:46.981)
couldn’t deal with anything else, I told them about that. I was too scared, I just felt like everything would fall apart. And I kind of made that decision at about seven. And so my mindset at that point turned into, have to make everything all right, just keep everything okay, make them happy. And I think that led into this kind of chronic perfectionism, people pleasing and…

when I mentioned that first diet that I went on about 17, cause I had absolutely no concerns or body issues before then, it was just a diet. It was just what everyone was doing. All my aunties went to Weight Watchers and Slimming World and it was when diets became almost, I guess, kind of really mainstream, know, Weight Watchers were making ready meals. know, diets became so easy and it was just what everyone was doing. And so I did that just cause everyone else was doing it, but I found something I was really good at.

because I have you know when I do have a lot of willpower when I kind of set my mind something and of course that my parents never pressured me in any way but of course with that you get compliments and that just fed into this look at me aren’t I good everyone thinks I look so good and the compliments the people pleasing and it just fed into that just then becoming this is what I’m good at people think I’m good at this I get lots of praise for this and

started this kind of life of people pleasing and also an eating disorder.

Tara Boyle (07:27.569)
I can’t hear you.

Victoria Kleinsman (07:30.902)
I muted myself because Cole was crying. that so that catalyst into the addiction, it’s a strong word, but maybe obsession with working with doing with constantly being busy. So I’m hearing you say is from what happened to you in the past, the eating disorder characteristics started with perfectionism, which you and I both know, shame and perfectionism are two sides of the same coin. When we feel so much shame within ourselves, we try to be perfect because then it’s furthest far away as possible.

Tara Boyle (07:31.879)
Victoria Kleinsman (07:59.392)
is that shame if we’re perfect, we’ll be good enough, people will accept us and then of course the eating disorder behaviours and the perfect, but obviously not the great, great and not in a positive sense but the perfect way to spiral into that, into the anorexia. Before you reached out to me, I know you were looking at other potential avenues to help you with around the clinical route and things, had you tried anything else before?

Tara Boyle (08:24.163)
No. And again, I think that kind of find it strange. Not trying to be over critical, I guess, of healthcare I’ve had in the past, but certainly over the last…

I think two, three years, any health professional who didn’t realise how sick I was by looking at me, that doesn’t make sense to me now that I look back. And again, I won’t mention numbers, but we’re talking dangerously low numbers. And you could see that in how I looked. And it was never, ever mentioned to me. I used to get called…

Victoria Kleinsman (08:53.624)
Mm.

Tara Boyle (09:01.967)
when I went see doctors and I was having maybe tests and you say, the only time it’s mentioned was when I was getting medication and say, well, let me think what dose you’ve got because you’re quite small. So that would be a consideration when you’re a small person. So let me think what dose of medication. I was never weighed.

There was never a discussion about anything like that. I just used to get told I was quite small and I went through a series of tests the December before I reached out for other things and I had all kinds of tests. Luckily I was fine but during all of those tests I think now they were searching so hard for causes of what was low sodium that had at the time.

Victoria Kleinsman (09:30.243)
Hmm.

Tara Boyle (09:45.285)
and no one ever questioned anything about my, I was never weighed in those tests. They scan my kidneys, they scan my liver, I brain scans, I had heart scans, nobody ever weighed me, which is…

Victoria Kleinsman (09:57.134)
Do they ever to ask about your nutrition and what you’re actually feeding yourself every day? Wow, that’s mind-blowing to me, isn’t it?

Tara Boyle (10:01.712)
No.

Tara Boyle (10:05.275)
Yeah, and so all the beer I’ve got, I love my doctor and he’s great and he’s supported me hugely through this. It was only when I went to him with it. And so no, I hadn’t tried anything else and I only went to my GP with this when I’d made the decision that something had to give if it was me. And then he’s been great. He’s been supportive of everything I’ve chosen to do.

Victoria Kleinsman (10:13.582)
Mm.

Victoria Kleinsman (10:21.794)
Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah, and you get to educate him and he’s open after our conversations we’ve had, he’s at least now open to perhaps asking about these things other than just not going there or not even thinking to go there. didn’t not go there on purpose, he didn’t even think about it, but it’s so important. And why didn’t you choose to go down the other avenues that you were exploring?

Tara Boyle (10:41.243)
Yeah. Yeah.

Tara Boyle (10:49.467)
When I kind of did Google search, naturally the first options that come up are kind of the more traditional routes. And I did make some inquiries. I think I spoke to you about one particular place that I’ve been speaking to a lot. And again, I’ll never know. Could have been great for me, I don’t know. But I just had to go with my gut. I had four…

Victoria Kleinsman (10:56.526)
Mm.

Victoria Kleinsman (11:11.725)
Yeah.

Tara Boyle (11:19.077)
telephone conversations with various people there before I kind of got to the point where I spoke to any kind of medical specialist, I guess, about what might be right for me. Almost like this kind of screening type process. And by the time I got to the fourth call, the lady sent me an email and said, right, well, let’s move forward on Monday, being the Monday after. And I kind of thought, hmm.

my insurance was going to pay for that, my health insurance. And I kind of said to her, I can’t go forward on Monday. And she said, well, we think that we need to do this six weeks from Monday. You need to be here every single day.

And at that point I realised she’s not yet asked me anything about my life outside the eating disorder. She didn’t know if I was married, she didn’t know if I had children, she didn’t know if I had any commitments. And I kind of thought to myself, are you not wanting to do it and so you’re trying to push it off into the future and you’re using this as an excuse? And then I thought about it, I thought no, the reality is she’s…

Victoria Kleinsman (12:09.666)
Mm. Mm.

Victoria Kleinsman (12:24.622)
Mm.

Tara Boyle (12:32.74)
I felt very pressured and it felt very clinical because she might have been right. Maybe that Monday would have been the best time for me to start. I really shouldn’t have been wasting any time. But what really didn’t sit right with me was the fact that they were going to take me in to this treatment place for six weeks and she knew absolutely nothing about me before I made and it felt very impersonal.

Victoria Kleinsman (12:43.886)
Mm.

Victoria Kleinsman (12:56.855)
Yes.

Tara Boyle (12:57.293)
So then when I spoke to you, we had a whole conversation about me, not about food or what I was eating. It was about my beliefs. It was about my family. It was about my relationships. It was about how I felt and where I was in life about everything else except the eating disorder. And so I felt like you knew me better than anybody at that point, because obviously these are things that people don’t talk about particularly in any depth before we started. And that to me felt like a safer place to start.

Victoria Kleinsman (13:08.459)
Victoria Kleinsman (13:25.806)
Yeah, well thank you for sharing that because of course those of, well you know, because you’ve worked with me, well people that follow me know that I take a very holistic approach. And it’s interesting how for not all clients, but many people I work with, we don’t really speak about food much, which is funny, right? You think, you you go for eating disorder recovery and the whole entire process is gonna be about food.

Yes, we talk about it, especially at the beginning and like what unrestricted eating looks like and there’s questions that come up along the way. But actually we spend more time talking about the stuff underneath, the reason for the eating disorder and the perfectionism and the feeling not good enough and all of that. And then the eating just kind of with the behaviour changes you’re making just kind of levels out itself. So can you explain how it felt when we first started working together? And obviously the goal was unrestricted eating.

how quickly were you able to embrace that and what fears did you have and as you were navigating that until it felt okay for you?

Tara Boyle (14:23.591)
Well, this is both credit to you. I spoke to you in I think the end of July and you were, I also then was still needing to kind of push off starting coaching because of a work thing. Maybe in hindsight I prioritised that wrongly but at the time it felt important. But you were patient with me and I definitely knew I was going to do it. I wasn’t trying to…

Victoria Kleinsman (14:32.238)
Hmm.

Victoria Kleinsman (14:40.812)
Yeah.

Tara Boyle (14:51.919)
get out of it but I simply had in my head that I had to get something done first. But because I’d already spoken to you and we shared a few emails, I made a decision really before we started working together that I was gonna just on my own start to increase my eating. I was like well I can wait till we start doing the work but actually I just felt hopeful that…

Victoria Kleinsman (14:56.686)
Yeah.

Victoria Kleinsman (15:15.758)
you

Tara Boyle (15:16.515)
it wouldn’t be as bad as I thought it would be and if I could at least make a start then I was in a better place when we started so and it blew my mind that I was able to do that even without the coaching because I just felt like

I felt like that there was some hope there already and so why not just make a start. So I started very, very slowly because I didn’t have really, I was really just eating a little bit more food. Not even significant, but it significant for me because it was first time in many years that I’ve done that and actually it kind of felt okay. And then we started to work together and you’re right, I think the first few sessions I felt so much that was spiraling in my head over everything that…

Victoria Kleinsman (15:38.99)
Hmm.

Victoria Kleinsman (15:46.998)
Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Victoria Kleinsman (15:59.086)
Hmm.

Tara Boyle (16:02.169)
I don’t even think that I could have really gone into the whole eating thing without you being able to tell me that that bit was going to be okay. So we worked through some of that, didn’t we? We talked about it a lot. And when that started to ease off, it just then, everything became easier, which included then to start kind of working on kind of physically getting better and eating more food.

Victoria Kleinsman (16:12.462)
Mm.

Victoria Kleinsman (16:16.611)
Yes.

Tara Boyle (16:30.341)
And I really enjoyed it. I really enjoyed eating the food that I hadn’t ate for such a long time. Did I always love how it made me feel? No. But when I was sat eating whatever it was that I felt like eating, in that moment it was just worth however I was gonna feel the next day.

Victoria Kleinsman (16:37.326)
Mm-hmm.

Victoria Kleinsman (16:52.61)
Yes.

Tara Boyle (16:53.159)
and then I knew that however I felt the next day, I was gonna have all these things that I liked that made it worth how I gonna feel the next day. So for me, I didn’t struggle as much as I thought I would with the food and the putting on weight. didn’t… I’m not saying it was easy, but I would like people to know that…

Victoria Kleinsman (17:13.933)
Yeah.

Tara Boyle (17:17.703)
what feels like is going to be the scariest thing in the world if you are in a very restrictive eating disorder, it’s not that bad. And even if it is, it gets better. Do know what I mean? If you’d have asked me, even, you know, this time last year, if you’d have ever said that to me, that I could do that, bearing in mind I hadn’t been able to do it for 30 years, I’d have thought that you were mad.

Victoria Kleinsman (17:21.549)
Yeah.

Victoria Kleinsman (17:30.018)
Yes. Yes.

Victoria Kleinsman (17:41.432)
Yeah.

Tara Boyle (17:44.643)
And so the more you do it, the easier it gets. And it’s just, it’s life changing when you finally realize that you can do it. And I believe that everyone can do it. If I could do it, anyone can do it.

Victoria Kleinsman (17:56.194)
Yes, and what I-

Victoria Kleinsman (18:00.214)
Yes, I fully believe that I’m an advocate that anyone can recover. But what you did is you chose more stronger than choosing. You decided you were doing this. And with that decision, you didn’t go back. You kept going. And when it got hard, you reached out to me, I supported you and you kept going. And this isn’t saying that anyone who has been going back and forth is doing it wrong because I was there too.

But it’s a lot easier when you make a decision, get support from someone you trust and just go for it. Because like you said, the fear of the thing is actually worse than the thing itself.

Tara Boyle (18:39.715)
absolutely, absolutely I think you spend so much time convincing yourself that it’s impossible because you’ve not been able to do it already.

Victoria Kleinsman (18:48.696)
me.

Tara Boyle (18:50.993)
because if it was possible you’d have done it already. Anyone with an eating disorder, we always believe don’t we, that one day we’ll wake up and we’ll go, I’m just gonna start eating today. You know, wait for that day don’t you, as if something’s gonna change in your mind overnight and that you’re gonna be able to fix it yourself. And we all think that’s gonna happen and I thought that for 30 years. And like you say, I mean, with being slightly older, I kind of went into it with a mindset that I am not doing this twice.

Victoria Kleinsman (18:59.49)
Yeah.

Victoria Kleinsman (19:05.635)
Yes.

Yes.

Victoria Kleinsman (19:19.854)
Mm.

Tara Boyle (19:20.709)
I don’t think that’s an age thing that like you say, know How old do I want to be before I succeed with this? But that the same mindset should apply to anybody because like you say it’s not always easy Why would you to do it more than once?

Victoria Kleinsman (19:35.97)
Yes, wouldn’t you? That was because you decided you were doing it. And I wouldn’t say, would you say you believed it could work for you? Or would you say you had a different feeling before you went into this?

Tara Boyle (19:48.839)
did I believe it would work?

I think I must have believed it would work because I think I said to you that the day that I initially picked up the phone initially to a set wasn’t a day that was particularly bad. It wasn’t a day anything had gone wrong. I hadn’t planned it. It was just a normal working day and something made me pick up the phone that day for absolutely no reason that I planned. A split second decision that I could have picked that phone up at any time over the 30 years and I think I said to you, I don’t know what that was but…

it kind of made me think that this is exactly the right time so I have to have some belief that by me doing it on that day for no reason whatsoever with no plan I kind of had this feeling that it must be exactly the right thing to do and this must be the time to do it.

Victoria Kleinsman (20:36.931)
Yeah.

Victoria Kleinsman (20:42.892)
Your intuition!

Tara Boyle (20:44.231)
Yeah, and then like you say, there were times, I think just before we started to work together, when I started to share with people what was going on, because that was really important for me. mean, people knew, like I say, you couldn’t help probably, but know by looking at me, but people weren’t mentioning it to me, and I understand that, know, people, people must have known it was a difficult subject, and that by bringing it up, it could have either worked really well, or it could have worked really badly. I’d probably get defensive and all the rest of it.

Victoria Kleinsman (20:53.102)
Mm. Mm-hmm.

Victoria Kleinsman (21:04.461)
Yeah.

Victoria Kleinsman (21:09.752)
Mm.

Tara Boyle (21:11.111)
I wanted to own it. I wanted to kind of say the word. I have an eating disorder. That felt really important to me because there’s a lot of shit. I felt a lot of shame around that. You know, how is a grown up woman who functions in the real world, who’s got a job, who’s got family, who’s got all these things, why can’t I eat food? Like, why can’t I? Because that’s what people think it is, don’t they? People say, why can’t you just eat food? And I kind of felt that. I was like, well, why can’t I? You know, what is it? It feels,

Victoria Kleinsman (21:30.456)
Yes, exactly.

Tara Boyle (21:41.017)
I felt quite a lot of shame about that. So opening up to people and telling people was exactly the right thing for me to do. But even then when I spoke to them and everyone was very encouraging, and I would always kind of say, what if I fail? What if I fail? So that was there, the possibility of failure. But I think overriding that was like say that intuition that if not, I think you’ve said it before, if not now, when?

Victoria Kleinsman (21:57.934)
Yeah.

Victoria Kleinsman (22:08.522)
Yeah, because nothing’s going to change unless you change, like, and you knew that. How did you work through the fear? So you come to eat more, we’re diving into childhood stuff, all this stuff’s coming up, you took time off work, that was like your get out of being busy, busy, busy, busy, busy. How did you cope with everything that came up, including facing the fear every day?

Tara Boyle (22:31.771)
how did I cope with that? I had various little things that I put in place. I found for me that I certainly had my initial fears, I think as we discussed were around, you know, whether I would ever have any peace in my head, you know, was this, was this me forever? And if it was me forever, you know, how would I

Victoria Kleinsman (22:49.027)
Yeah.

Tara Boyle (22:55.431)
function going forward in that kind of spiraling state of mind. And I assume kind of we found some peace with that when we started to do some work with that. So that made, certainly made things easier because I think that was my overriding fear. And then the fears then that came with, I guess, people’s usual fears with gaining weight, with your body changing, with feeling and looking different. I had various little things that I used to do, which were just my own little

kind of ways of talking myself down from that. So I had a couple of mantras that I had that I kind of sat in the mirror every morning and read to myself, you know, like saying, you know, really kind of positive stuff. You told me that I had to remember who that I was.

Victoria Kleinsman (23:43.556)
you can swear, you know you can swear on here. Yay!

Tara Boyle (23:44.815)
Yes, remember who fuck you are, which is now on a bracelet that I’ve got, just in case I forget. So that was really key. Stuff like, you know, those kinds of things first thing in the morning, like get your, you know, almost adjust your attitude this morning. Who are you today? Because if from the minute you get up, you’re that person, then you know, in theory, that person can deal with whatever comes. So that was important to me.

Victoria Kleinsman (23:59.727)
Get your crown on every time you wake up.

Tara Boyle (24:13.403)
The inner child stuff that we did was really, important because I kind of then went back to kind of the little me who I wanted to change her future.

I initially struggled with accepting that that was, that me and her were the same person, but I felt very protective over her. So what also helped me was a picture of myself, which is still on my kitchen cupboard, about the age of six, looking cute as a button, even if I say it myself. So she lives on the cupboard. So when I’m kind of stood at the cupboard wondering, am I going to have this or am going to have that, or am I not going to have that, like a visual for me became really important.

Victoria Kleinsman (24:44.577)
Mm-hmm

Yeah.

Tara Boyle (24:56.453)
you know, to have things in my sight, you know, at all times. On my mirror in my bedroom, we again, we talked about me feeling very trapped and isolated in a cage. And so that was stuck on my bedroom mirror as a reminder that that isn’t somewhere I’m going to be anymore. So those are things that I found really helpful when I would be scared. I would just kind of have these visuals of why I’m doing this and you know, what I’m going to get out of it. And so I think that really helped me with

Victoria Kleinsman (25:05.73)
Yes.

Victoria Kleinsman (25:20.643)
Yeah.

Tara Boyle (25:26.088)
Those things became more important than the fear or made it easy to deal with because I could visually see the reason that I was doing it.

Victoria Kleinsman (25:34.008)
Yeah, it’s so key. And can we now chat about, because even though it’s not food related, it’s definitely eating disorder related, your busyness in your professional career. You don’t have to say what career you do if you don’t want to, but the overworking and the people pleasing within that, can you talk about how that was for you, how it affected your life, then how you actually started to move away from that? Because you took time off to recover, which was the best thing you could have ever done for yourself.

Tara Boyle (26:00.487)
Yeah, yeah. Now I don’t mind saying what I do. I’ve been a lawyer for about 22 years and it was at the time that I went into that job still, it doesn’t seem that long ago, but it was still very much a man’s world.

I worked for quite a long time with kind of no prospect of moving on, of being promoted, because I worked in companies where men were kind of at the top and worked for lovely people, but nobody who really kind of was ever going to, no matter how, because I always worked. Working hard for me is a thing, it’s always been a thing. It wasn’t overwork, but I always worked hard. But I worked in lot of places where I’d…

I didn’t really think that was seen or appreciated or it wasn’t going to move me up anywhere. And then I moved on to the place where I still work now where hard work was really noticed and appreciated.

Victoria Kleinsman (26:51.255)
Yeah.

Tara Boyle (26:59.515)
And of course being the people pleaser, they, even regardless, I’ll just say one thing, even today in the position that I’m in now in the work that I do, I still go in most days with a bit of imposter syndrome or are used to before we kind of went through what we went through. And so because of that kind of imposter syndrome, I felt this need to overperform constantly, to take on more and more and more and do more than everyone else and have more than everyone else and…

Yeah, I think that just was, I think that was naturally my personality but it just became more more and more to the point that I was getting more physically unwell, more mentally unwell. Nobody could see it, it was completely hidden. I could certainly go in and perform.

Victoria Kleinsman (27:50.444)
and you’re praised for it as well.

Tara Boyle (27:52.731)
Yeah, I would go into work and nobody would know that anything was going on, but it literally was, I was like two different people. I felt like I was work me who gave this kind of outside perception of everything’s great. And then this inside me where it just felt like it was just falling apart all of the time.

And so yeah, think it, like you say, the person, the seven year old who decided to be good and to make everyone happy and not to kind of, not to say no very often, that certainly came out in my career. I’m very proud of what I’ve done and I’ve helped a lot of people and…

Victoria Kleinsman (28:24.654)
Mm.

Tara Boyle (28:32.359)
it just, was an environment that wasn’t actually going to be stressful and for someone like me it was always going to probably trigger those things that I in me as a child and of course because of the title of the job, know, was something my parents were really proud of so when I qualified as a solicitor that got me that validation from them, you know, that the seven-year-old me kind of wanted after my brother died, I wanted it to be…

I wanted to be able to fill a hole for them, not take his place because you can’t take someone else’s place, but I always then wanted to be someone who my parents were really proud of, almost as if I could make it better that he wasn’t there. So when I got that job…

Victoria Kleinsman (29:10.69)
Yeah.

Tara Boyle (29:13.305)
Of course they were like so proud and so again you know it was everybody’s just really pleased at this job that I’ve got and I just have to be so good at it that because this is pretty much my identity now. This is who I am, this is what I do, this is what I get validation for.

And I think I very quickly had to learn when we started working together because of course I then took some time off which was very, very weird for me. I hadn’t had a day off sick in 22 years. I had worked through sick days and everything. And I very quickly realised it’s not my identity, it’s just what I do. It is just what I do. And anyone who calls, you know, people who say, oh, you’re a solicitor, I’m like, no, that’s what I do. It’s not who I am.

Victoria Kleinsman (29:52.044)
Yes.

Victoria Kleinsman (30:00.569)
powerful. Who are you? I’m going to ask you a really big, deep question now. Who are you now?

Tara Boyle (30:02.158)
It is not who I am.

Tara Boyle (30:08.935)
Oh, do you know, I don’t even know if I know yet because the best thing that I’ve realised actually about kind of what I never intended when I went through getting treatment was I thought I would come out of it hopefully mentally feeling a bit stronger and in a stronger body. But what I didn’t realise is that it just actually changes your whole perceptional life.

Victoria Kleinsman (30:33.634)
Yes.

Tara Boyle (30:34.211)
It changes everything about what you think you are and who you are. You know, the core bits remain. If you’re a good person, you remain a good person. Of course you do. All those good bits about you, you know, they don’t go anywhere. But when you let go of all the stuff that wasn’t serving you…

you’ve got all of this space and you’re like, God. So I’m not a lawyer, that’s not my identity. I still do that as a job. But what else am I? And actually what’s quite exciting is that I don’t know yet. I just know that I’m just open to anything.

Victoria Kleinsman (30:53.582)
Thank

Victoria Kleinsman (31:05.324)
Yes.

Tara Boyle (31:10.863)
absolutely open to anything, not scared of anything anymore. used to, I think I said to you, I was quite scared of life really before and people would think that was strange because of how I put on a front and how I seemed so confident and capable. But actually I was pretty scared of life. was scared of change. I was scared of new things. I just wanted to have the job and the eating disorder. I knew they were my familiars, my safe places, my stability.

Victoria Kleinsman (31:16.696)
you

Tara Boyle (31:36.711)
anything else frightened me. I was scared that somebody would take one of those two things off me and I wouldn’t know what to do without them. And now, yeah, and now it’s, I don’t know, I I haven’t been tested in any particular challenging way, but I just…

Victoria Kleinsman (31:44.3)
Yeah, because that way we’re your cage.

Victoria Kleinsman (31:55.02)
Yeah, you have. You went somewhere recently that was a big challenge because you had to face a certain someone from your past.

Tara Boyle (32:00.357)
Yes, yes, that is true. Okay, yeah, that was a challenge.

Victoria Kleinsman (32:03.022)
That’s like the biggest challenge ever, hello!

Tara Boyle (32:05.991)
Okay, yes I did and I had a great time. I went to a wedding last week where I had to face somebody from my past which was either, well I guess some people thought it was the worst thing I could ever do. It was going to send me back, it was going to be terrible.

I spoke to you and I said I just have, I’m sick of hiding, I’m sick of shame, I’m sick of my life being dictated by the past and I, you know, the point for me of recovery is that there’s got to be something new and something better and I’ve got to be able to go out there and do those things that I was preventing myself doing before.

Victoria Kleinsman (32:37.155)
Yeah.

Victoria Kleinsman (32:48.568)
Yeah.

Tara Boyle (32:48.965)
And so for me it felt important to do that and just to decide to myself that nothing’s going to stop me now doing what I want and living the way I want to. And so while a lot of people thought it was crazy, you supported me and told me you thought it was the right thing to do. And it was, it was exactly the right thing to do because I’ve changed so much now that I just in that…

Victoria Kleinsman (33:03.33)
Yes.

Tara Boyle (33:12.665)
in that place and you know around those people I just felt I just felt invincible I just felt like a completely different person that it just didn’t bother me and all I did was just have fun I just embraced having fun be myself too many glasses of wine just

Victoria Kleinsman (33:18.732)
Yes. Yes.

Victoria Kleinsman (33:24.674)
Mm.

Victoria Kleinsman (33:30.83)
You

Tara Boyle (33:32.259)
just had such a great time and those ghosts from the past didn’t bother me a bit just felt I you know it I just felt nothing and that to me is the best feeling when you feel nothing about something that’s hurt you in the past then that’s when you’re winning no hate no no fear no no feeling at all nothing and that’s to me was was winning you know I thought I might go there and feel some kind of hate or anger no not even that

Victoria Kleinsman (33:45.934)
Absolutely.

Victoria Kleinsman (33:52.142)
Wow.

Yes.

Victoria Kleinsman (34:00.462)
You process that during coaching though, we spoke about it a lot and the wound was open and gushing, bit of weird word to use, I’m not sure how I feel about that word, but it was, but you met little Tara, you was there for her, did you write a letter to this person without giving it this, I think, yeah, yeah, you released all this anger. And so when you did see this person in real time, you were in your power.

Tara Boyle (34:07.163)
Yeah.

Hahaha

Victoria Kleinsman (34:29.39)
I remember messaging you, you didn’t need the reminder, but I wanted you to know I was with you. Like the day that you went, remember who the fuck you are, stand in your power today and have fun. And you did.

Tara Boyle (34:39.493)
Yeah, exactly. And it just felt like, it almost felt like…

It was just a great way because me and you had our last kind of session together just before I went. And it just felt like a big that that coming the weekend after was like a test of how far I’ve come. I was going somewhere where I had to face some demons and figure out how that was going to be. And I also was going somewhere for three days with no control over what I ate, no planning. I was going with a friend.

Victoria Kleinsman (34:53.965)
Yeah.

Victoria Kleinsman (35:01.006)
Mm.

Victoria Kleinsman (35:14.648)
Yeah.

Tara Boyle (35:17.425)
And I just thought what she wants to do I’m doing we’ll go where she wants to go We’ll eat where she wants to eat. We’ll eat when she wants to eat I have obviously had a discussion that had to bring my porridge on the plane in case I got hungry So, you know, I might have to eat in between times that she wanted to eat Because I do get very hangry now but apart from that it was just I’m gonna go with the flow and That’s exactly what I did and to me that was a really big test that I didn’t feel frightened. I didn’t overthink

Victoria Kleinsman (35:28.45)
Yeah, which is an act of self-care.

Victoria Kleinsman (35:43.512)
Mm.

Tara Boyle (35:46.937)
the menu, I just got what I wanted, I ate what I wanted and that for me was a really big test because prior to that even though I’ve been eating what I want when I want, I still have some control over that. You do don’t you in your own home because you have to buy it and you know and you have to prepare it and it felt to me like the first time I was really going to be in a situation where I had no control over food and I wanted that test, I wanted to just check that

Victoria Kleinsman (36:01.976)
Yeah. Yes.

Victoria Kleinsman (36:11.822)
you

Tara Boyle (36:16.453)
that I could do that and feel nothing. That what I was doing at home was actually just to make sure that there wasn’t anything that I was doing at home that still had some level of control that was making me feel okay about it. If I can do it outside of that, then that’s the test for me. And so it just was, yeah, such a great, almost a life changing three days, which actually was just a wedding I went to.

Victoria Kleinsman (36:41.582)
Celebrating their love but primarily celebrating love that you now have for yourself.

Tara Boyle (36:47.877)
Yeah, and I did send a message to the groom and said, look, so happy to be part of your day. said,

because you know I undenied like say we had conversations about me going and I said I wasn’t sure I didn’t want to share too much but I did want to kind of get that across and I said I hadn’t been feeling great last year and I wasn’t sure about coming for various reasons but it’s the best thing that I ever did I had such a great time I didn’t really have to say any more than that and you know there no questions around that but erm

felt like I had to say something more than, it was just a great time, because for me, it was completely, way more than just a good time.

Victoria Kleinsman (37:27.468)
Yeah, and I assume that, well I know, but I think it’s worth speaking to for others. This time you went with your friend because she was there for a few days and you were eating when she was eating and not controlling everything, I’m sure you were able to connect on a much deeper level with your friend in comparison to when you were with her before and you were checking what restaurant to go to because of the menu and the calories. So how has your relationships changed since you’ve now recovered?

Tara Boyle (37:55.239)
My relationships. Yeah, certainly I think, well it’s funny because since I’ve known her, since I got to know her, I’ve known her quite a long time, but like you say, we tend to meet in social situations which might be going out for lunch, going out for dinner, and I’ve been this very controlled, perfect person.

She’s not a friend I’ve had for years and years. I moved to London and I made friends. So when I moved to London I’ve always just been the person that… I presented the person that I kind of wanted to portray which was usually having to be quite perfect. And nobody knew any different. Nobody knew the old me or probably the real me. You they knew the me that I presented and that doesn’t mean that I wasn’t…

Victoria Kleinsman (38:41.454)
Mm.

Tara Boyle (38:45.605)
being a genuine friend to them, I was a little bit, so I was, but I suppose I was a little bit afraid to drop the mask and really be me in case, well what if they don’t like me? Because that’s what you’re sword of talisman, doesn’t it? You know, you get all these fears that you’re not good enough and you don’t look good enough and you’re not funny enough and people don’t really like you unless you’re doing things for them or giving things to them.

Victoria Kleinsman (38:54.286)
Mm.

Tara Boyle (39:10.595)
And so it’s funny because she then ended up spending three days with me in a hotel and by the end of it I think I said to her, I said because just a whole different me came out like the me that just I don’t care like

sometimes saying things that are a little bit inappropriate because I didn’t have to watch what I said. You know, just kind of waltz and all me. Do know what I mean? And he was just so nice because she just, it didn’t change anything. She just accepted me exactly who was. And I kind of said to her at the end, I said, I said, we’re going to do this again? And she kind of looked at me and she went.

Victoria Kleinsman (39:32.322)
Yeah.

Victoria Kleinsman (39:47.768)
Yeah.

Tara Boyle (39:54.087)
And then she said, yeah, I had a great time. And I think, like I say, it was probably the first time that my newer friends in life have seen a different side to me that just isn’t pretending anymore, that isn’t putting on a front, doesn’t have to be perfect. And so I’ve got lots of friends I haven’t actually seen yet. And obviously, I’m sure they’ll all be really happy for me. My old friends, people who knew me, Waltz and all, back in the day, I think for them, I’m just the person I used to be.

Victoria Kleinsman (40:22.915)
Yeah.

Tara Boyle (40:23.423)
I’ve just gone back to that person who was quite carefree before eating disorders and all of that kicked in.

Victoria Kleinsman (40:28.642)
Yeah. What was the best and worst thing? Well, okay, let me rephrase that. Rewind. What was the best thing about coaching and what was the hardest thing?

Tara Boyle (40:40.737)
thing

Tara Boyle (40:46.939)
Let’s start with the best thing. The best thing because that’s easy for me. I think the only way I can describe it is…

Tara Boyle (40:59.847)
Just the support it was and not a support for me almost for my Recovery my disorder it was the support for me which I think was different to what I felt I would get

Victoria Kleinsman (41:10.68)
Mm.

Tara Boyle (41:13.903)
in that traditional setting. I thought I would be getting lots and lots of support for recovery from my disorder, but I wasn’t sure that anybody cared enough, or that was my interpretation at the beginning, enough about me, would I be a different person at the end of it.

Victoria Kleinsman (41:19.906)
Yes.

Victoria Kleinsman (41:30.126)
Or would you just be the same you, just heavier?

Tara Boyle (41:30.759)
not just a bigger person, but would I be a different person? And so I think for me it was that. And of course with that then, when you’ve got that support and you’re feeling supported and you feel like as a person with my fears and my goals and all of the things that were going on with me, if that was being supported, the rest of it was just easy.

Victoria Kleinsman (41:54.712)
Yes, yeah.

Tara Boyle (41:54.993)
Whereas I feel like if I still had all those demons in my head and nobody was supporting me around that, I don’t know how I would ever have got to the bit where, you know, not feeling scared around food, because I was scared of everything at that point. But with the coaching, I wasn’t scared anymore of me, of life. And so then the eating became easier because I wasn’t scared of anything anymore.

Victoria Kleinsman (42:07.182)
Yeah.

Victoria Kleinsman (42:15.958)
Exactly that. And you cannot fully recover and be the same person you were. You can’t just be you without an eating disorder. And that’s again, in a clinical setting, not always, but so many, what I’m saying is so many people come to me after they’ve exhausted the professional clinical route and yeah, they’ve gained weight and quote unquote recovered and keep relapsing because they haven’t changed who they are and they see the world in the same way. In fact, in a…

in a more challenging way because they’ve gained weight, well they still have an eating disorder in their head. So it’s even harder, so they’re not changing who they are at their core. Not at their core because like you say, you are who you are, but they’re not changing their perception of the world and themselves, which is crucial. Yeah.

Tara Boyle (42:58.683)
Yeah, yeah, exactly. And you know, I can’t think, gosh, I’m trying to think of, know, somebody, yes, I’m not gonna deny that some body changes weren’t hard. I didn’t struggle with them maybe as much as other people do. And that’s not to say I was doing it better than them, but it just wasn’t an easier thing for me because I think my eating disorder.

Victoria Kleinsman (43:15.918)
Why do you think that is?

Tara Boyle (43:23.335)
even though it started with a diet, what made me carry on with that wasn’t what I looked like, was what it made me feel like. So body image wasn’t huge for me when I went into recovery. In fact, the opposite, in fact, I I said to you, I I hated how I looked, you know, I desperately, desperately hated how I looked. was, you know, a t-shirt was, was impossible. A t-shirt was impossible in the summer because my arms were so painfully thin and my legs were, and I was covering up all the time and I didn’t want, I didn’t want that anymore. So, you

Victoria Kleinsman (43:29.848)
Yeah.

Victoria Kleinsman (43:48.216)
Mm.

Tara Boyle (43:53.251)
know, for me gaining weight, yes sometimes it felt awful. It felt like my body was 12 times bigger when I woke up the next morning, which it really wasn’t. You you have to get your head around those feelings and you have to understand them and you have to realise that you won’t feel like that every day. Some days your body’s going through all kinds of changes and it’s going to feel different every single day. And it will feel different to it did in the eating disorder because you’re giving it food and it’s now having to do different things. So I just had to get my head around the fact that

Victoria Kleinsman (44:00.28)
Yeah. Yeah.

Victoria Kleinsman (44:20.099)
Mm.

Tara Boyle (44:23.145)
When I wake up every day, my body will feel what it is. It will be what it is. And some days it might not feel good. Well then the next day it’ll feel fine. The days of feeling bad, that doesn’t mean your body can feel bad every day. It’s just your body’s doing what it’s doing that day and sometimes it doesn’t feel good. And the next day, it could just be that you’re a bit sluggish, your digestion’s not as good as it was. Maybe you’re overtired. But those days happen when I have my eating disorder.

Victoria Kleinsman (44:27.022)
Mm-hmm.

Victoria Kleinsman (44:31.331)
Yeah.

Victoria Kleinsman (44:49.71)
you

Tara Boyle (44:50.171)
You know, those days where your body doesn’t feel at its best. I have those days at the depths of my eating disorder. They are just days that everybody has. People without eating disorders, we all have days where we have a bad hair day, where our body just feels a bit sluggish or a bit whatever. And then the next day it’s fine. And I just had to get used to that. I just had to get used to fact that what the changes and what I felt like in my body, they’re just normal things. And they were just the same, like you say, the same way as I might like my hair today, I might not like my hair

Victoria Kleinsman (44:58.498)
Mm.

Victoria Kleinsman (45:03.043)
Yeah.

Tara Boyle (45:20.105)
today and it’s not ruining my day.

And even to this day, like I say, some days I get up and I feel a real spring in my step and completely energised. And that isn’t about what weight I am. It’s just sometimes your body feels that way, doesn’t it? Everything feels like it’s just working correctly. In other days I feel bit sluggish and a bit tired and a bit heavy. And that’s just all stuff that’s going on in my body. It’s hormones, it’s digestion, it’s lack of sleep. It is what it is. And there’s no point trying to control it because you’re always going to have those days no matter what body size you’re in. It’s not about weight.

Victoria Kleinsman (45:22.965)
Exactly that.

Victoria Kleinsman (45:31.96)
Mm.

Victoria Kleinsman (45:36.684)
Yes.

Victoria Kleinsman (45:46.167)
Yes.

Tara Boyle (45:52.827)
about your body doing what it’s doing every day.

Victoria Kleinsman (45:55.17)
Yeah, and the key there is you accepting and surrendering to that and just getting on with your day and moving forward regardless, not seeing feeling not great in your body as a sign to go back to the eating disorder because it’s not working. That’s not what you chose to see the discomfort as you’ve beautifully explained. This is what it is. I’m accepting that and I’m just gonna move forward and get on with my day and be open to feeling differently whenever I feel differently.

Tara Boyle (46:23.215)
Yeah, yeah, exactly. You know, it’s not going to stop me. Now that I’ve got what feels like a world of opportunity in front of me, why would I give that up for the sake of a bad body day? It just doesn’t make any sense to me whatsoever anymore. It would to hold me. It would ruin my day. I would be impatient, frustrated, angry with the world just because what my body felt like. I would get, would, on those days I would want to go to bed.

Victoria Kleinsman (46:34.23)
Yes.

Victoria Kleinsman (46:39.266)
Yeah.

Tara Boyle (46:49.337)
to stop feeling that way and hope I felt better the next day. Like what a waste of life that is. Yeah. Yeah.

Victoria Kleinsman (46:52.514)
Yeah. Yeah. To avoid the feeling discomfort. Yeah. What was the best thing about this entire process?

Tara Boyle (47:03.955)
god, there’s so many things.

I certainly will always hang on to two words which made such a big difference in my life which was when you told me to stop future tripping because I was always living in the future, always planning and well trying to live in the future definitely not living in the present always you know trying to work out you know how could it be a better more perfect me tomorrow than I am today next week than I am this week

Victoria Kleinsman (47:18.67)
Yes.

Tara Boyle (47:35.235)
And so that, you know, I just needed a simple way to put that in perspective, which was like you say, it was two words, future tripping. So every time I kind of got in that mindset, it was like just reminding myself of the two words, you can’t control tomorrow, can’t control the day after, you just got to look after yourself today. So that was really valuable. And I think the takeaway, I think I would say to anyone, the only way I can describe

to me what recovery feels like is that the heaviness in my body which isn’t, I don’t mean, but the extra heaviness in my body, the weight gain, the way I describe it, the heaviness in my body is absolutely worth the lightness in my head.

Victoria Kleinsman (48:13.154)
Yeah. Yeah.

Victoria Kleinsman (48:22.258)
yes!

Tara Boyle (48:24.057)
It’s like you can’t buy, what you don’t know yet if you’ve got an ear disorder is that it feels like someone switches a light on in your head. know, almost like you say, almost the bigger my body was getting, the calmer I feeling in my head.

Victoria Kleinsman (48:38.082)
Mmm.

Tara Boyle (48:38.631)
it felt like someone just switched on a light and that and you won’t know until you try but that is once you get that you will not ever want to go back into your eating disorder. That’s not to say people don’t really like appreciate that things happen but once you know that that’s possible it will always kind of give you that incentive to recover and stay recovered if you can.

Victoria Kleinsman (49:00.45)
Yes. Yeah. What would you say to someone who’s listening to this and sees themselves in the past version of you and they’re perhaps where you were before you started this process? And of course there’s a lot of fear for them about starting recovery. What would you say to someone who was considering going for it but who has so much fear in everything you’ve worked through?

Tara Boyle (49:25.691)
think I’d say what you said earlier, the fear is so much worse than the reality of recovery. I think we’re all naturally, like you say, inclined to fear things that we think are going to happen to us and when they happen, either they don’t happen or they’re nowhere near as bad as you think and you can think of a million situations in your own life where that has been the case. you know, everyone will be able to find a situation in their life where that fear…

Victoria Kleinsman (49:43.532)
Mm-hmm.

Victoria Kleinsman (49:49.368)
Yeah.

Tara Boyle (49:55.183)
turned out not to be scary at all or it wasn’t as bad as they thought. So if you can get yourself in that mindset and think of something that you’re really afraid of and then it happened and actually you got through it it was fine, this is the same. It feels so much bigger if it’s been such a part of your life.

But the same principle applies. That yes, it’s scary, but it’s, I will say, it’s not as scary as you think. And even if it is scary, you still, as long as you commit, as long as you commit and you decide you don’t want to go back, it gets less and less scary, the fear gets less, the happiness gets more, the joy gets more, the energy, the fun, the space, all of those things will replace that fear the further on in your journey you get. And those, like I say, are invaluable. And you just don’t know.

Victoria Kleinsman (50:30.734)
you

Tara Boyle (50:41.905)
yet because I didn’t know yet that those things were part of recovery and you know so you know anyone who thinks it’s just about having to live in a bigger body that’s not true it’s so much more than that and the bigger body will be absolutely worth all those extra things that you get.

Victoria Kleinsman (50:47.031)
Yeah.

Victoria Kleinsman (50:52.288)
No.

Victoria Kleinsman (50:58.99)
A fucking man to that Torah. And that’s why I always say, be 99 % committed is hell and be 100 % committed is easy. I probably believe that.

Tara Boyle (51:08.293)
Yeah, yeah, exactly.

Yeah, you know, I just think even the days when you’re tempted to take one step back, know, just what, you know, my body feels bad today. I’m just not going to eat as much. That skirt doesn’t fit, you know, whatever, you know, whatever little things you’re allowing, because that happens. You allow little sneaky behaviors to, to, to trip you up. You don’t know that’s what you’re doing. I think I spoke to you and I said, I had a skirt and a pair of jeans that fitted me most of the way through my recovery because they were

Victoria Kleinsman (51:17.08)
Bye.

Victoria Kleinsman (51:31.064)
Mm.

Tara Boyle (51:40.793)
they were actually way too big when I used to wear them before I didn’t realise but then I got to a point where I wasn’t sure if they did fit me or not because I’ve put on a bit more weight and I was kind of trying them on weekly to see if they still fit.

Victoria Kleinsman (51:42.414)
Hmm.

Victoria Kleinsman (51:53.966)
Hmm. I dunno.

Tara Boyle (51:56.623)
And I thought to myself, that’s just seeing if these clothes still fit me or should I throw them away. What I was really doing was checking my weight because I stopped weighing myself. I didn’t know what I weighed. I didn’t want to know. But it was a little sneaky behaviour that was coming of checking if I’d put on weight.

Victoria Kleinsman (52:03.459)
Yeah.

Victoria Kleinsman (52:12.184)
Yes.

Tara Boyle (52:12.807)
And I kind of wondered and I kind of put the question to you and I kind of knew what I was doing really. kind of wanted, you know, I was hoping you’d say, oh no, no, that’s normal. No, people do that, but you didn’t. And I knew myself anyway. And so, you you’ve got to watch those sneaky behaviors coming back in and they will try, you your eating disorder will send those things in. think you just have to become very self-aware of those things don’t feel like a big thing, but they’re a little bit of a step back.

Victoria Kleinsman (52:19.17)
Yeah, you knew.

Victoria Kleinsman (52:41.282)
Yes, and it’s being aware. Yeah.

Tara Boyle (52:41.881)
if you let them become a habit. You you think as long as you’re eating that you’re not going backwards, but those little sneaky things that still trying to control your body or check your body or check your weight, you you let those become a habit and see how you can very slowly start to take steps backwards.

Victoria Kleinsman (52:57.634)
Yeah, or at least then live in quasi recovery for God knows how long that can be.

Tara Boyle (53:01.509)
Yeah, still trying to fit into, you know, I’m physically healthier, but I still want to fit in that skirt. Yeah.

Victoria Kleinsman (53:07.18)
Yep, that’s not true freedom. That’s freedom with conditions and freedom doesn’t come with conditions. True freedom.

Tara Boyle (53:12.869)
Yeah, so I think he said to me, said, well, look, why don’t you just put them away? And you know, if they fit you in six months, you do. And I did. And then about two weeks ago, I just thought, I’m throwing them out. And I did. I just, you know.

Victoria Kleinsman (53:19.053)
Yeah.

Tara Boyle (53:28.679)
And all I did was I went on the website where I got them and ordered a bigger size in both of them. So I’ve still got the skirt and a pair of jeans. I just didn’t need that. And I think I said to you one day, I had a bit of a moment with something I went to put on that didn’t fit me anymore and had a little bit of a wobble about it. And then I looked at the label, because I know what size of clothes it was, and I was wondering if maybe I should get a bigger size. And I realised that it was an extra, extra small.

Victoria Kleinsman (53:32.44)
Done. Hope and soves.

Victoria Kleinsman (53:46.19)
you

Tara Boyle (53:58.183)
And I just had this moment where I thought, why do I want to be extra, extra small? Like, because my head didn’t feel small anymore. My head didn’t feel like a small person. My head felt capable of anything. And so was like, so that doesn’t make sense to me anymore, to want to be extra, extra small. Because to me, everything about that is someone who’s hiding, someone who’s small, someone who’s got no place in the world, someone who’s got no voice.

Victoria Kleinsman (54:07.874)
Yeah.

Victoria Kleinsman (54:13.934)
Mmm.

Tara Boyle (54:26.415)
and that doesn’t equate anymore with what’s in my head.

Victoria Kleinsman (54:29.186)
Yeah, I mean, I was gonna bring it back to something like that and you’ve already so wisely shared. Would you like to share what is on the horizon for you?

Tara Boyle (54:40.647)
Well, like I say, there’s probably lots of things on the horizon that I’ve not even discovered yet. But I definitely, I’ve spent a long time in my career helping people and I’ve loved that. I’ve certainly, know, being a lawyer is a job where you certainly learn about life, you learn about the good, the bad, the ugly. You deal with whole ranges of different people and actually…

I think people think, I think we have a perception of people and certainly that if you’re in your job as a lawyer that you always deal with people who are bad or people who’ve done things wrong. Actually what I realise is that most people, and I maintain this all day and night, most people are good people.

Victoria Kleinsman (55:28.12)
Yeah, I agree. Yeah.

Tara Boyle (55:28.219)
but some people have problems and in whatever way, for me it’s important in whatever job that I do that if I can help somebody get out of a problem, whether it’s a legal problem, whatever it is, then that is what makes me get up every day. And then as we went through this, coaching, I kind of thought, actually, yes, it’s what I do for people in my legal work, yes, might to a point change their life or get them out of trouble, but actually.

Can I, what you do is saving lives, ultimately. And I think I said to you about my birthday this year, I didn’t do anything. I didn’t go out, you know, didn’t have the usual fancy dinner, lots of pictures, nice restaurant. Didn’t do any of that, that facade that I used to do every year in this, like, you know, wanting to look like I having the perfect birthday, because everything had to be perfect. This year, I went swimming with my sister.

Victoria Kleinsman (56:13.464)
Mm.

Victoria Kleinsman (56:17.282)
Thank you.

Tara Boyle (56:23.783)
And then went out for dinner with my dad and my auntie and I just felt grateful to be alive. Cause I’m not sure that if I, you know, eight months on in the state that I was in, I can’t say for sure that would be true. It’s a scary thought, but I can’t say for sure that that would be true. And I just thought, you know, it’s simplest if you can help someone.

Victoria Kleinsman (56:30.968)
in.

Victoria Kleinsman (56:39.746)
Yeah.

Tara Boyle (56:48.411)
both survive and be happy in that survival. So giving them every reason to want to be here. So I thought, well, maybe I’ll give coaching a go.

Victoria Kleinsman (56:57.262)
You won’t give it a go, you’ll absolutely be such a light in this world.

Tara Boyle (57:00.891)
Well thank you. that’s, yeah, I’m gonna, I’m slowly working on building something up with that website and obviously I’m gonna be working a little bit more with you for a bit of support with that. Learn from the master.

And yeah, so that’s kind of my next step. You know, I’m gonna continue helping my clients at work and I’m gonna do this because I really want to do it. And you know, let’s see where it takes me, but I’m doing it because I want to do it, not because I have to do it. I’ve got a job, I’ve got all the things that I need, but now it just feels really important to me now that I know what I know to help somebody else hopefully get to where I’ve got to.

Victoria Kleinsman (57:41.102)
that’s what I felt Tara when I’d recovered or when I say recovered I actually started helping people when I thought I’d recovered but actually I still had more work to do but it wasn’t available to me yet until I started coaching interestingly enough. It was me feeling the way I felt in comparison to how I used to feel in the eating disorder. I was like I need to share this with the world somehow people need to know because I never thought I could feel the way I felt and feel.

I need to share this somehow and that’s when coaching came into my world. So I’m just so, so grateful that you found me. The universe works in mysterious and beautiful ways. So grateful for you trusting me to support you on this journey. I’m so fucking proud of you for doing the work and going through the fear and everything you’ve shared so brilliantly today. If people want to reach out to you, can they and how can they do that?

Tara Boyle (58:17.926)
It does.

Tara Boyle (58:32.869)
I haven’t yet got my social media and everything sorted yet. I’ve always kept that very private in the job that I do at the moment. But obviously that will change. I will kind of build up a separate social media and things for my new coaching. So hopefully at some point you might share that for me. But I’ve just not got that set up yet. But yes, it’s not long. It’s just in the process of happening. And I think what you just said there is important actually. Do I class myself as recovered?

Victoria Kleinsman (58:51.031)
I will.

Tara Boyle (59:03.815)
Yes, do I think there’s not more that I’ve got to learn? No, I think I it’s a point where you think you’ve done enough That’s a scary place. I think you’ve got to assume that there’s more to know more to learn That will and so for me what I’m doing now with kind of thinking about coaching is I’m just really committing to Learning and knowing as much as I can of things that maybe not in my experience But you know for other people’s experiences and that really still makes me

Victoria Kleinsman (59:08.492)
Yep.

Tara Boyle (59:33.721)
feel stronger in my recovery, the more that I know, the more that you know the easier it’s going to be to recover, that’s how I feel, you know, either that will come from a coach or wherever. If you are, if it’s explained to you why, you know, almost, almost like…

I felt like I needed an explanation for where I was and why I was to be able to then solve it. so knowledge is power, isn’t it? And I think, like you say, even as a coach, you’ve just got to keep learning and learning and learning because then you can just pass it on to other people. The more knowledge about all of this in the world, the better.

Victoria Kleinsman (59:52.694)
Yeah. Yes.

Victoria Kleinsman (01:00:02.52)
Yeah.

Victoria Kleinsman (01:00:06.306)
Yeah, never stop learning and I believe knowledge plus inspired action is power. And part of our coaching will be for you to, this sounds cringy, but it’s so true, for you to know that the biggest tool, the biggest impact you will have as a coach is tuning in and trusting your intuition. I mean, yeah, you need to intellectually know stuff to support people, but the biggest thing is just your intuition and what feels right for each client. And that’s the base of my work.

And it’s hard to teach because it’s my intuition, but I teach you how to connect even deeper to what feels right for you as well as the knowledge. So this is just a sign for everyone out there to practice tuning into yourself because as cringy as it sounds, you do already have all the answers within you. Sometimes there’s just so much trauma and wounding and conditioning in the way. It feels like you’re not connected at all, but you just need to remember that connection that’s already there.

Tara Boyle (01:01:04.071)
Yeah.

I mean, in the nicest possible way, you didn’t tell me anything medically groundbreaking. You know, there wasn’t, it wasn’t that you had knowledge from studying or anything like that that I didn’t know about healing from an eating disorder. Everything you told me was just perfectly common sense, but you have to heal from the inside for that to resonate to then take the next step. And that’s where the support of a coach comes in. If you are being supported as a person with everything about you and that person knowing everything about you,

Victoria Kleinsman (01:01:14.285)
Yeah.

Victoria Kleinsman (01:01:24.451)
Yes.

Victoria Kleinsman (01:01:31.886)
me.

Tara Boyle (01:01:34.929)
then like you say, there was nothing groundbreaking, but even the most simple things, when somebody’s supporting you and coming from a place of love and compassion, they just hit different, don’t they, than somebody telling you that from a book.

Victoria Kleinsman (01:01:43.438)
Mm.

Victoria Kleinsman (01:01:47.852)
Yes. Yes, absolutely. Tara, thank you for sharing your story. This is just the beginning for you. I’m so excited. And everyone listening, of course, when Tara’s out there ready to start supporting, I will be sharing it. So watch this space. And listeners, I’ll see you next week. Tara, thank you for your time. Much love to everyone.

Tara Boyle (01:01:58.631)
excited.

Tara Boyle (01:02:11.303)
Thank you, bye.