Kiki Athanas: Inside the Strategy to Rebuild Intuitive Eating and Escape the Endless Cycle of Orthorexia

As a part of my series about women in wellness, I had the pleasure of interviewing Kiki Athanas, an intuitive eating coach who helps people live their best lives.

Kiki is laser focused on helping women conquer emotional eating and practice healthy, balanced eating with consistency and ease. She helps women connect with their own version of the “skinny b*tch” and has designed a unique program called 10/10 without the irritating food restrictions or ridiculous gym requirements.

All of this stems from Kiki’s own journey healing from various disordered eating. As she openly shared her own story, it struck a chord with numerous women who had undergone their unique struggles with disordered eating and the relentless pursuit of perfection, a pursuit often intertwined with their relationship with food. This transformative journey ignited Kiki’s fascination with food and ultimately propelled her toward helping women understand and unravel the complexities of orthorexia and the relentless quest for an ideal diet. Instead of fixating on perfection, Kiki has directed her focus towards fostering an understanding of intuitive eating, and liberating women from the confines of dieting’s vicious cycle.

Thank you so much for joining us in this interview series! Our readers would love to “get to know you” better. Can you share your “backstory” with us?

We teach what we had to heal within ourselves. For more than a decade, I lived my life deeply & obsessively struggling with my relationship to food. While it all started with a genuine desire for greater health & happiness, I put on a bit of “puppy fat” growing up, and it felt amazing to lose it and get back to what I felt like was my “best” self again. Health, diet, exercise, and wellness eventually became my unhealthy addictions. Food started to rule my life. I was constantly thinking about my last meal, my next meal, and how I could optimize my food choices for greater health and weight loss. On the outside I was thin and appeared “passionate about wellness.” I was hosting workshops like ‘DIY Kombucha’ and ‘Herbs for Stress,’ but deep down I was a shell of a human.

Eventually, the binge-eating creeped in. I found myself pounding nut butter & bananas standing over my kitchen counter following a dinner where I politely declined dessert. I’d commit to fasting, celery juice, and a strenuous workout the next day to make up for it, but the cycle would repeat itself. I began gaining weight in all the wrong places, my skin was breaking out so viciously that not even the fanciest creams & makeup could hide my stress anymore, and I felt like a total fraud. My obsession with clean eating became my dirty little secret.

I sought out a solution. Intuitive eating and mindfulness didn’t really help me — at least not at the start. I needed more structure, more accountability, more of a “no-fail” framework. I knew I had to “let go” of my rules, but it still felt like I genuinely NEEDED rules in order to figure myself out of this mess.

Eventually I came across various methods and pieced together a system which I used to relearn the boundaries of my body — within weeks everything had shifted. I started to lose the excess I had gained (literally from “dieting”) and began eating like a “normal” person again. Everything I had spent so long and fought so hard to separate myself from became my goal: just eat whatever you want, whenever you’re hungry, and enough to feel balanced. While there’s obviously nuances to the method, it allowed me to reconnect with my gut (which is said in multiple ancient wisdom & modern scientific modalities to hold the ‘core identity’ — a sort of tangible portal to our most authentic selves) and get back on my path. Somewhere amongst ‘growing up,’ I disconnect with myself and my true wants, and instead I built an identity in food.

Today I get to live out my true passion of teaching, leading and inspiring other women to live out their best, healthiest lives — which has a lot less to do with green juices and a lot more to do with staying present and embodied. With that said, I’m all for wellness that works and not afraid to admit to being a bio-hacking wellness babe mildly “obsessed” with pilates, infrared saunas, dry-brushing, and prioritizing my facial appointments above all else. It’s just that these “wellness” things now add to my life, rather than consume it. It’s about finding what works for you and owning it, instead of following external rules from a place of self-hate and fear.

Can you share the most interesting story that happened to you since you started your career? What were the main lessons or takeaways from that story?

My journey in moving abroad and becoming a digital entrepreneur — although I feel way too high-maintenance in order to truly resonate with the term ‘digital nomad’ (I have like 5 electronic face fitness & LED light tools for my jawline alone, LOL!). Once I fully surrendered into truly owning my wants and reminding myself “It’s okay to want what I want!”, I packed my bags to Mexico with zero long-term strategy other than month-to-month airbnb rentals. I’ve since made my way through several other countries spanning North American & Europe and am currently writing these responses from a gorgeous flat in Greenwich, London before I depart for Athens. Who knows how long I’ll stick around there (if there’s ever one spot to enjoy food freedom and total abundance with all foods, it’s Greece!).

The main lessons I’ve learned through building a name for myself while traveling the world — often solo with minimal friends & family in the cities, have all centered around embracing my “selfishness”. It was the hardest thing in the world to tell my parents that I wanted to leave the country they had both fought a tremendous struggle to build a life in. It felt selfish, indulgent, and downright silly. But it was what I wanted — and I was right. I genuinely believe that I was meant for a life of adventure & continuous newness. I’m here to take the risks for the beautiful things in life. My environment and the pretty little things & people within it makes me feel alive.

Just like how we can only access the feeling inside our own stomachs to assess whether or not we’re hungry or if there’s even room for food — only we know our own soul’s desires. By strengthening my intuition around food, this subtle guide within myself began to bleed out into other areas of my life — and in order to stay connected to myself, I had to not only listen but to act. I think the bravest thing we can do is exactly what we want. I used to think that was selfish or somehow detrimental to others, but when we take impeccable care of ourselves, we can give and be more for all of those around us. I am still learning this lesson today (*as well as how to stop going to one country with one suitcase and somehow always leaving with three).

It has been said that our mistakes can be our greatest teachers. Can you share a story about a mistake you made when you were first starting? Can you tell us what lesson you learned from that?

Absolutely! It was following a business coach’s every last word when it came to how to run MY business. While this particular coach was wildly successful and gave killer advice and unbelievable hands-on support, I didn’t resonate with her vibe as it related to my brand as a “coach”. It all felt very salesy, and to be honest: lame. I resisted pursuing my work for so long solely because the idea of calling myself a “coach” felt awkward and embarrassing.

I managed to enroll clients into my program while white-knuckling-it nonetheless, and thankfully kept a business going simply due to client referrals and word of mouth. Yet, I kept my work on the downlow. I never shared much about it on my social media because I didn’t want to be judged or laughed at. I also knew that my true gift was helping women recover from “dieting” and ultimately get their dream body back (or discover it for the first time!), but I knew addressing the topic of weight loss would be triggering for some and put a target on my back.

One day I decided to own it like I had started owning everything else in my life. I stopped pretending that in order to heal your relationship to food you have to stop caring about health & weight. I stopped picking sides — aesthetic health OR body positivity. I came out of the wellness closet loving and appreciating both, and for once, not being afraid to say and share it! The greatest lesson in all of this was that in order to find your people, you’re going to piss some people off, and that’s okay — it doesn’t mean you’re wrong, it just means you’re telling your own honest truth.

Let’s jump to our main focus. When it comes to health and wellness, how is the work you are doing helping to make a bigger impact in the world?

When we are living in connection with ourselves, we are more at peace with the greater outside world — life is happening for us, not to us. Since our gut holds our core identity, reconnecting with this vital part of ourselves is key to living in alignment with our truest life’s path. I believe that by teaching women how to eat intuitively, I get to be the catalyst for growth in ways that go beyond food. When you are able to operate from a place of total choice and complete honest respect for the body, you start to view other areas of your life from the same lens: abundance. I think we can all agree that living from the perspective of abundance is one of the greatest mindsets for health & happiness. We are kinder, more thoughtful & generous, and ultimately more available to life.

The greatest impact for positive change in the world today is being done by conscious individuals who are following their passions wholeheartedly and without hesitation — they are following their intuition. This intuitive knowledge can start in the kitchen, and it can end up changing the world. Many of the women I had the opportunity to share my method with ended up making pivotal changes in their personal & professional lives soon after our time together. I don’t think that’s a coincidence. With more women living in their truth confidently, we can fill the world with more loving acceptance.

Can you share your top five “lifestyle tweaks” that you believe will help support people’s journey towards better wellbeing? Please give an example or story for each.

1. Wait for hunger before eating.

So many of the women I begin working with are struggling with digestive issues & excess weight not because they are necessarily eating the ‘wrong’ foods, but because they are eating when they’re not even hungry. Whether this is because they had a fitness trainer scare them into not having a protein smoothie immediately following a workout, or because they heard someone on Instagram say they have to eat within 30 minutes of waking up, or perhaps they are eating preemptively out of fear of being hungry later. The reasons are endless but the solution is simple: always ensure there is room in your stomach before you put food inside. This doesn’t mean we need to be very hungry before every eating occasion (although a good amount of hunger before any meal is particularly helpful in a weight loss journey — I like to think of it as “mini-fasting” between meals which is way more effective and sustainable versus a trendy ‘intermittent fasting’ that everyone adheres to today. It simply means that our bodies need to be adequately equipped to digest food before eating. When we are hungry, this is communication from the body that it’s ready for more fuel! This is a wonderful thing we can honor rather than avoid or otherwise react negatively towards. A bit of hunger also helps you better enjoy your meals — we all know eating when hungry tastes a heck of a lot better than eating when not hungry! Ditch eating by the clock and instead get reacquainted with your innate hunger signals in order to maximize the pleasure of eating again.

2. Eat to balance — not fullness.

Okay, so you’ve waited for hunger, now you get to stuff your face, right? Nope! (And this is precisely why I’m not a huge fan of intermittent fasting which in my professional experience — subconsciously encourages overeating within your eating window). We want to eat like the French or Japanese — both of these cultures are known for eating to feel energized & light, not bogged down & heavy. Remember that food is meant to carry you forward, not slow you down. While we certainly want to slow down & sit down to eat, it can be a powerful habit shift to get used to eating enough to feel fully satisfied & satiated — but not too much whereby we feel any weighted consequence in our stomach afterwards. Think about how you’d eat if you were on vacation with nothing to do afterwards except stroll along the beach or walk around the town’s shops — you’d likely eat slowly so you can enjoy your meal, and eat only enough so that you can also enjoy your body afterwards!

3. Catch your thoughts & direct them with intentional kindness and truth.

Our thoughts can make us sick but they can also make us well. What’s going on in your head first thing when you wake up? Are you stuck in the past? (Depression). Or are you already in the next moment? (Anxiety). Be present. Choose to be here now. Use whatever mantras or inner dialogue to remind yourself you are safe and can choose loving calmness in this moment. Happiness is a choice. We get to, & need to, choose peace in every moment of our day. This isn’t about doing a morning meditation and then rushing off into a frantic state for the rest of the day — it’s about taking your peace in your pocket for the entire day! When we are able to drop the strain of operating out of alignment from our true selves, we are no longer “spent” at the end of the day, & no longer need the box of chocolates to cope.

4. Give up your food rules.

If there was anyone who loved a good food rule, it was me! Permission to get out of my body and rely on an external rule so I could make sure I was eating “correctly”? Sign me up! Unfortunately, like for all of the women I work with (& you too!) — rules of eating take us out of our body and into our heads…and since we don’t have any fullness cues up there, we end up eating more than feels best for us. Not necessarily in every eating situation, but the body always wins — so if we deprive ourselves in one area, we’ll likely overdo it when we get the chance. Think: the binge-restrict cycle. While the idea of giving up any and all of our food rules can feel incredibly daunting — since we adopted them in the first place to keep us safe (“safe” being, for many women: healthy & slim), it’s absolutely essential in order to prevent OVEReating in the long run. I use a very structured boundary formula with women, so that they don’t feel like they’re walking into a total ‘free for all’ at the start of their intuitive eating journey.

5. Get selfish.

In order to be well and live well, we need to make our own wellness top priority — and this doesn’t mean you’re taking away from anyone else’s right to do the same. I for one have definitely fallen into the trap of feeling like a total diva for making certain food choices when easier/cheaper options were more available, going for a morning walk in the sun when everyone else was rushing to their laptops, or making extra time to exercise even if it meant rearranging a call time. While it can feel daring in the moment, when you are well-rested, well-nourished and well-moved, you are able to give at such a higher quality level. I am grateful for my supportive partner who I get to live out my healthy-diva status with, who never judges or condemns me for my efforts. In fact, a funny thing happens when you live good, you inspire those around you to do the same!

If you could start a movement that would bring the most amount of wellness to the most amount of people, what would that be?

Permission to be free. Much of my work centers around empowering women to act in accordance with their own bodily signals and cues, and ultimately we need freedom & total choice in order to do so. On my social media I try my best to drive home the overarching message that we are allowed to take ownership of our health and that we can be our greatest teachers and therapists to ourselves. I’d love to think that I am part of a broader movement of ‘Intuitive Living’ whereby we start getting back in the drivers seat of how we choose to live our lives. It starts with freeing ourselves from conventional wisdom around diet & nutrition, exercise, and what it means to be “healthy”. I am a huge fan of thought-leaders like Joe Dispensa and Eckhart Tolle who are leading the masses in this journey back home to ourselves.

What are your “5 Things I Wish Someone Told Me Before I Started” and why?

First things first, get some friends with lifestyles you admire and resonate with having as a goal — socializing with these people is SO expansive. We are creatures of our environments. Bonus: they’ll “get it” when you share your wins, worries, and everything in between!

Protect your energy before it’s sucked dry — it’s way easier to prevent burnout than to recover from it. Do all the “silly little wellness rituals’ you need to breathe deep and slowly but surely throughout the day. For me, these include keeping my phone on airplane mode from 8pm-8am every night, coherent breathing in the morning followed by a visualization meditation and some form of mental rehearsal for my ideal day, then I rub some essential oil (usually frankincense) on my temples and do some stretching. I follow-up with lots of warm lemon water and drink my coffee while doing some gratitude journaling and future pacing in my notebook. From that moment on, I can step into my day and actually take my calm with me — these rituals keep me feeling nourished, at peace, and in my body. Nothing else matters (& ultimately, my business suffers) if I let these sacred practices slip. I wish I would have truly accepted how valuable this is before I tried to burn the candle at both ends and slip into the ‘productivity’ trap which I now steer clear of!

Following from the above point — I’ve figured out for myself (& now share similar teaching with clients) that prioritization is the golden ticket to presence. Being a perfectionist with a large dose of frantic ‘get-shit-done’ energy in my personality, I tend to gear towards the next (not present) moment in the pursuit of efficiency. The thing is — you’re not efficient if you’re not present! Listing out all of my tasks either right before bed (for the next day) or immediately when I get to my desk helps me stay focused and undistracted — this a game changer for actually doing the activities that move the needle in my business.

Here’s a truth you don’t hear on social media: you don’t NEED to invest in support (if you don’t want to or feel incapable of making the investment — nothing is worth stressing you out!). I feel like so many entrepreneurs are bullied into thinking they HAVE to throw thousands of dollars at their business as soon as they get started or they’re not being ‘serious’ about their business. I think this is silly. I know of a lot of fellow entrepreneurs who were incredibly scrappy with their investments and enjoyed killer high-quality results. While I did invest in various business coaches and support systems along the way — I also had periods of time when I wasn’t working with anyone and still felt like I was making progress. I think the journey of an entrepreneur ebbs and flows and we need to respect the seasons we find ourselves in!

At the end of the day, regardless of where you’re at in your business — from day one of deciding to ‘do the thing’, to years in with a viral brand name and a waiting list through the roof, you’re still going to have days (A LOT) where you doubt yourself. You’re going to question everything. You’re going to feel like a fraud. You’re going to feel like you’re doing it all wrong. The important thing is you pick yourself back up and turn around the head chatter that wants to knock you down, and find new ways to congratulate yourself for exactly where you are now.

Sustainability, veganism, mental health, and environmental changes are big topics at the moment. Which one of these causes is dearest to you, and why?

There is no question, doubt, or hesitation with this one for me: it’s mental health! I believe it is key in order to get to the root of any & all issues in this world — all of which, at the core, stem from a place of fear and/or hate. If we feel calm & connected to ourselves, we are able to operate from a place of love & abundance — connected to the world and the living beings around us.

I think I have such a special place in my heart for this issue as my brother lives with severe Autism, and ever since I was a young child I was exposed to the heartbreak and havoc that comes with living with someone with ASD — and how it impacts the entire family’s mental health. I have now reframed this circumstance in my own life as a gift and genuinely believe my brother lives happily and there is nothing to be ashamed of, or even sad about, it has instilled in me great understanding and awareness of how valuable a chemically balanced brain can be. I believe that those of us who are able to consciously create our circumstances have a responsibility to help others achieve their own fullest potential and it all starts from within.

What is the best way for our readers to further follow your work online?

You can follow me for more nuggets of eating truths and wisdoms here:

• Website: https://www.kikiathanas.com/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/kiki_athanas/
• TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@kiki_athanas?lang=en

For a deeper dive & to gain insight support, check out:

• Skinny Bitch Greatest Hits Playlist: https://www.kikiathanas.com/skinny-bitch
• Skinny Bitch Vision Board Template: https://www.kikiathanas.com/blog/your-next-vision-board-the-skinny-bitch
• Stop Emotional Eating Masterclass: https://www.kikiathanas.com/masterclass

Thank you for these fantastic insights! We wish you continued success and good health.