I feel like I lost my 20s to binging and restricting. On the surface, I was shining, I was achieving everything and doing all the things. But I was suffering, I was not really living.
— Dr. Regina Lazarovich, on this week’s episode of the pod
To be very vulnerable with you, this week’s episode unearthed a good deal of grief for me. It’s one of those conversations I wish that younger me—the one grappling with such a painful relationship with food—could have heard 20 years ago.
One of the most difficult things I had to untangle, especially in recovering from the cycle of restriction and binge eating, was that perfectionism isn’t discipline. It’s a kind of fear that wants to keep us safe.
Perfectionism whispers that if we just try harder, control more, or get it “right,” we’ll finally feel okay. But that pressure doesn’t heal us—it only deepens the shame that fuels binge eating in the first place. Because no one has ever healed by being harder on themselves. As my guest, Dr. Regina Lazarovich, says in our conversation: “You can’t hate yourself into change…”
Regina is a clinical psychologist, Health at Every Size (HAES)–aligned provider, and someone who’s lived through binge eating and perfectionism herself. She shares how her own eating disorder began in college — sparked by dieting and fueled by external validation, pressure to achieve, and the immigrant narrative of “education equals safety.”
We also unpack the lesser-discussed connection between high achievement, perfectionism, and binge eating, and how shame and restriction can keep us stuck in painful cycles with food.
Because if you know, you know: Being high-achieving and self-critical can make recovery from disordered eating uniquely challenging—especially when binge eating is misunderstood, pathologized, and moralized by diet culture.
Paid subscribers can listen to the full conversation, where we go deeper into:
The perfectionism–binge eating link—and why it’s so often missed.
How restriction (mental, emotional, and physical) can drive binge eating.
The myth of “willpower” with food.
How shame, validation, and family expectations shape our relationship with food.
Why binge eating is a protective response, not a personal failure.
How fatphobia and moral hierarchies shape which eating struggles receive compassion.
Gentle, practical ways to break the restrict–binge cycle and bring kindness back to eating and caring for ourselves.
Paid subscribers also receive:
Extra full-length conversations like this one
Personal essays and reflections I don’t share anywhere else
The full archive of bonus content
Behind-the-scenes insights and tools for healing your relationship with food and body
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Transcript:
Abbie Attwood (00:01.61)
Hi Regina, welcome. So glad you’re here.
Regina Lazarovich (00:03.128)
Hi, Abbie. Thank you. I’m so glad to be here. I truly am.
Abbie Attwood (00:11.882)
So what’s on your plate lately with food? Is it something, do you want to share something you are loving? Or is there just something that’s kind of helping you get by or something nostalgic? Like what’s on your plate lately?
Regina Lazarovich (00:27.18)
Yeah, so it’s something that I’ve been loving lately, but it’s also kind of nostalgic. So when you mentioned you lived on the West Coast, are you familiar with early girl tomatoes?
Abbie Attwood (00:41.565)
No.
Regina Lazarovich (00:42.638)
Okay, so they’re a kind of tomato, not apparently, not everywhere, but they are very much available here in the Santa Cruz area and I just love them and they’re seasonal and I guess they’re called early girl because they’re in season earlier than other kinds of tomatoes, but they are, they’re just very, they’re very delicious. And if you ever have a chance to have one, please do, but every time.
I go to the farmer’s market, just kind of get some and I just incorporate them. And the nostalgic thing, what I’ve been doing a lot of is just kind of bread or bagel with some like cream cheese or cheese and a tomato. And it just reminds me of like my childhood where there were meals of just bread, butter and tomato. And it just, I don’t know, it’s, I’ve been eating a lot of early girl tomatoes.
Abbie Attwood (01:40.352)
Okay, I swear there is something weird and witchy about this podcast question because I am not joking. I don’t have a plate next to me anymore. I left it in the kitchen, but I am not joking when I tell you I just finished eating sourdough toasted with butter, ricotta cheese, and sliced tomatoes from my mom and dad’s garden that they brought me yesterday. I don’t know what an early, like is an early girl, what is the shape? Like, know how there’s,
Regina Lazarovich (01:58.754)
Yes. It’s like a medium sized red tomato. Yes. Right.
Abbie Attwood (02:10.41)
There’s... So it looks kind of like a classic tomato shape, not like a Roma tomato. Ugh. Well, you know what? Maybe I’ve been eating them and I just have no idea.
Regina Lazarovich (02:21.774)
I don’t know, now that it’s kind of in your mind, look them up. They’re delicious, but I also just love a good tomato in general.
Abbie Attwood (02:25.578)
I will, I’m gonna, yeah.
Abbie Attwood (02:31.838)
Like with a little olive oil, salt and pepper, like it was really fresh from the garden to me. Your face is so funny right now. You’re like, God.
Regina Lazarovich (02:39.928)
Because I’m like, yeah, it’s a good fruit.
Abbie Attwood (02:43.56)
It’s one of those, I feel like it’s one of those foods that it is so starkly different, like fresh from, you know, something else, but mm, mm. My husband doesn’t like tomatoes. He won’t eat them. I’m like, well, more for me. It’s too bad. I know, I know. But he likes ketchup. It’s one of those.
Regina Lazarovich (02:55.214)
Yeah.
Wow, yeah, yeah. Yeah, yeah, sometimes it’s like that. That’s okay. We’re not, you know, we’re accepting. Yeah, yeah. People are allowed to have their preferences, but I’m glad that we see it. We get the, yeah, yeah, yeah. Tomatoes are really
Abbie Attwood (03:06.408)
the textures, you know? I will put ketchup on most things.
Well, exactly. I’m glad we I’m glad we know. I’m glad we know what’s up.
So I think you have, so you’re a clinical psychologist, right? And were there lived experiences with you around food and your body and your mental health that made you interested in going into this field in the first place?
Regina Lazarovich (03:28.042)
I am.
Regina Lazarovich (03:41.582)
Uh, yeah, I would say so. Um, so yeah, I’m kind of like my mind is going in several directions. I guess.
Abbie Attwood (03:43.784)
I know, I know, Cliff’s notes are fine. Whatever, whatever you want to share.
Regina Lazarovich (03:56.27)
Just how did I even declare psychology as a major in undergrad was because I started struggling with an eating disorder in college, in undergrad, because on earth and privilege kind of protected me up until that point, I think. And so, yeah, I really started struggling and also being an immigrant, couldn’t really...
I really tried, I was actually different from I think a lot of people in that I wasn’t secretive about my struggles. I was like, I am really struggling, I need help. you know, engaging in all this binge eating and it’s like, so disturbing to me and I couldn’t access, I couldn’t find my way to support into resources. And so I did the thing of just, well, I guess I’m just gonna major in psychology and figure it out and then help others. Like this was my idea while I was like deep in my own struggle and didn’t see a path. And so that’s honestly how I like kind of ended up in it. And why did I go for like the PhD level was just, I think again, the immigrant thing where it was just this obvious thing where I had to go for the highest degree possible so that I could have the most options. yeah, so I don’t know if that really answers.
Abbie Attwood (05:31.378)
No, that’s amazing. Yeah. Well, don’t worry. You can say anything and I will have a million questions to ask you about it. So you just said something. We said so many things that are so interesting. I feel like that, that like illuminated so much about you in just a minute. I love it. Did when you said that you wanted to go to the, for the highest degree possible because of your identity and kind of having the most options. it, was any of that about like proving yourself to other people or did it have more to do with just like internal motivation?
Regina Lazarovich (06:13.752)
That’s a difficult, I think both, know, I think, it’s interesting, I didn’t expect that we’ll go so deep into my, you know, certain of my intersections and identities, but kind of, yeah, I think a big part of it was being like a Jewish immigrant and like coming from the, from Ukraine, from the former Soviet Union, like.
Abbie Attwood (06:15.999)
Yeah.
Regina Lazarovich (06:37.098)
a big part of what I was raised with is education. Education is the thing that is portable. Education is the thing that is just expected of you. And for me, it was very much like, this is the baseline. not that I was, it was kind of always my thing, academic achievement throughout my life, but not in a way that I was praised, but in a way of like, this is what’s expected of you, right? But I do think, you know, I, self-esteem started being tied to achievement. And yeah, I do think there was some of just kind of wanting to prove to myself and to others that I can attain this kind of...the most prestigious tier of this thing, whatever it is that I was going to pursue, I was going to do it to the max. Once I declared my major, I was like, well, I guess I’m going to be the president of the psychology club and do all these things. so, yeah, I think there was some of that internal kind of pressure coming through, but I think it was also interacting with feeling the pressure from knowing that, you know, as an only child, my parents sacrificed so much, so I need to kind of achieve something and, you know, prove that they didn’t waste their efforts and, you know, also just financially be secure, you know, so I think I didn’t, I don’t feel like I had the luxury quote unquote to explore other fields. Like I just kind of knew like my options are be a doctor or something else similar on that caliber. So I became a mental health doctor, you know. Yeah.
Abbie Attwood (08:34.432)
Sorry for being myself and asking the deep questions, but here we are. Can’t be anything but myself. The reason I pulled on that thread is because I think being oriented around achievement and also wanting to do everything really, really well, whatever you do, is...a characteristic that is so common in folks who also wind up struggling with disordered eating and body image, right? And so I was just thinking about that. Like I was thinking about you pursuing that degree and then you also speaking to the experience of disordered eating in college and an eating disorder all the while then also deciding, well, I’m going to solve this myself. Right? So I mean, I can see
I can see all of the parallels there. Like it’s kind of the perfect storm, that kind of perfectionistic, high achieving attitude. I relate to it so deeply and actually my eating disorder developed in that kind of similar time period too. So was your disorder eating and your eating disorder experience primarily around binge eating? Is that what you said? Or did it, there also a lot of restriction now looking back?
I think often we don’t realize that restriction is present with binge eating, but hindsight, you know.
Regina Lazarovich (10:09.378)
Yeah, so the symptom that was disturbing to me and that alarmed me was the binge eating. However, and it took literally a decade for me to realize this, which is heartbreaking to me because…
