Ilene Leshinsky
MSW
Official Guide
Creator of Find Body Freedom Expert
Ilene Leshinsky Quick Facts
- Main Areas
- Body Image, Women's Issues,
- Career Focus
- Coach, Retired Psychotherapist, Speaker, Writer, Seminar leader
- Affiliation
- Founder of Find Body Freedom (formerly BodySense)
I’d like to introduce myself to you. My name is Ilene Leshinsky. My husband and I relocated to Jupiter, Florida in April of 2017. As we got older the temperatures grew colder in Plattsburgh, NY (20 minutes from the Canadian border)!
I was a Licensed Clinical Social Worker in private practice in NY and MA, working primarily with women (for 25 years) who wanted more joy and fulfillment in their lives. In Florida, I coach women to find body freedom. I'll say more about that in a bit.
I graduated from Boston University School of Social Work specializing in counseling with adults and in group work. I love working with women of all ages (including adolescents). It’s not easy being a woman in today’s world with multiple demands on our time and energy. I’m gratified when I can help women learn to carve out time for themselves, to enhance their lives and their interactions with their loved ones. It’s amazing how depression lifts and anxiety lessens when we learn to value and take care of ourselves.
Women come to me who are struggling with body image, weight, and their relationship with food. I created Find Body Freedom for women (like me) who have felt trapped in battles with their bodies for as long as they can remember. I teach them to stop the struggles so they can learn to love their bodies and eat with joy. (If you are one of these women, I'd love you to contact me.)
Find Body Freedom is an online (or in person program if you are in South Florida) program of modules where you can progress at your own pace, have unlimited e-mail access to me, and individual sessions to discuss your progress and challenges (you select the number of sessions).
There are five modules in the progrm: An introduction to freedom which provides an overview and defines the terminology; freedom to love your body; freedom from the tyranny of the scale; freedom from diets, programs, and plans; and freedom to move your body.
Find Body Freedom also includes: lessons, activity sheets; logs, articles, videos and audios.
The cost is dependent on the number of individual, sixty minute sessions you would like with me.
If you would like to find body freedom, let's talk!
You can contact me at ileneleshinsky@gmail.com, www.findbodyfreedom.com, or 518.570.6164.
Articles by this expert
SelfGrowth articles and saved writing connected to this expert.
Article
***Body Image – Self Image
A hundred years ago, Renoir painted “La Toilette” (The Bather), a portrait of a young woman in the nude. She has long, aubu hair, full breasts and hips, a rounded belly, and, if the truth be told, thighs that look like mine. She’s voluptuous and she’s beautiful! One hundred years ago she was the ideal of feminine beauty. Today, she’d be one of my clients, struggling to accept herself in the face of an unattainable beauty ideal. When I show her to my clients, some of them are heartened by the resemblance they see to themselves. Some think, she has such a pretty face, but boy is she fat.
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***Proud to Be a Tortoise!
Remember the Aesop’s fable “The Tortoise and the Hare”? It’s the story of a lightning-fast rabbit and a plod-along turtle that are seemingly mismatched in a race. It was the tortoise, annoyed with the hare’s boastful assertions of being faster than the wind, that challenged the hare. To the surprise of everyone but the tortoise, (s)he wins. Well I’m a tortoise. For most of my life, I’ve put one foot in front of the other, to get to the finish line, to achieve my goals. “Slow and steady wins the race”!
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***Real Men Love Real Women
One of the reasons I love my husband so much is that he thinks most of the models in the Victoria Secret catalogues are “too skinny”. Yes, that’s a direct quote and boy, am I glad, since at five feet tall and a size 8 petite, I’ll never make the front cover – nor the inside pages for that matter. I’m blessed with a man who has loved my curves and my aging self for over 20 years.
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***What I Learned When I was Single
When I was twenty-four years old, I became a divorced woman. I had been married for four and a half years and in relationship with this man/ boy since I was eighteen. Getting divorced rocked my world, turned it upside down, pulled the rug out from under me, and knocked me on my tushy. All the old clichés applied. At the time, I was a middle school English teacher and I remember the head of the music department saying to me, "Look at you Ilene. You're pretty and smart.
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***Body Acceptance: What We Can Learn from Men
I think that men have it easier than women. No, I’m not going to discuss the state of the feminist movement in 2013, nor the equal pay for equal work debate. However, I am going to state that men have more body acceptance than women – and we women can learn a lot about this from men.
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*** Addicted to Food? Maybe Not
“I’m addicted to food.” “I’m a foodacholic”. I hear many of my clients express these beliefs and if the truth be told, I used to say the same things about myself. I remember planning binges that consisted of high fat, high sugar, and high salt foods. One of my favorite “meals” after a long, hard week in the retail industry (many years ago) was two huge chocolate chip cookies, an extra large bag of Doritos, and a two-liter bottle of Tab (I said it was a long time ago). Can anyone find any protein in those choices?
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***“There is Beauty in the World…” And It Comes in All Shapes and Sizes
A couple of things happened this past August that made me wonder about beauty and what it means to be beautiful.
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***If You’re an Emotional Eater, Wait Ten Minutes
I was in a car accident recently. It wasn’t a big one and thank God no one was hurt. However, accidents are jolting and can make us feel very vulnerable. After the initial shock, I wanted to eat. For me and for many of us, food calms and soothes. It transports us from our fears, our anxieties, our angers, our discontentments, to a place where nothing bad can touch us – at least for a few moments – or so we believe. (I forgot to tell you, I didn’t eat.)
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***Mirror, Mirror on the Wall
This summer, I did one of the most courageous things a woman can do – I tried on bathing suits – and actually purchased two! We were going on vacation in August, renting a house for a week on the Atlantic and I wanted to go to the beach in a bathing suit that flattered my body type and felt comfortable. The last time I bought a swimsuit was about six years ago when I walked into Sam’s Club, pulled a $15.00 Speedo tankini off the rack and brought it home. The pattern was cute, but the cut, well, not so comfortable. In those six years, I’d worn it twice.
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***BodySense: Make Eating a Mindful Experience
A while ago, one of my clients gave birth and decided to breastfeed her infant so she often brought her baby to therapy. Sometimes in the middle of session, it was time to eat. I’d watch the baby start to cry, curl her fists, scrunch up her face, and make rigid her little body. She was hungry and she knew it. As her mother attended to that need, I’d watch the baby melt with pleasure into her mother, face and body relaxed, eyes closed as her needs were met, both physically and emotionally. Witnessing this, I could not doubt the powerful connection between food and emotions.
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Article
***Learning to Be Happy
I have a client who says to me every now and again, “I wish I had your life. You always seem so happy.” I smile and think about some of the “discussion” I have had with my husband or that the cost of medical attention for our animals is putting my vet in a higher tax bracket or how irritated I get with littlest of things. But I think I know what she means. I have an open face. I smile a lot, and I tend to have a positive, optimistic view of life. I wasn’t always like this, however. Childhood set the stage for unhappiness and obesity.
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***The Long and Winding Road…to Self-Acceptance
I am 63 years old! Have I ever told you that? I realized that I seldom reveal my actual age these days. Not because of the stereotypical female thing – we lie about our age and our weight. And I never was that way when I was younger. In fact, I threw myself a fortieth birthday party and proudly announced when I turned fifty. I think lately it’s been more about worrying that my younger clients and my students won’t think I’m “cool” or “hip” or have anything relevant to share with them.
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Websites & resources
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Contacting Ilene Leshinsky
Please contact me at ileneleshinsky@gmail.com or www.findbodyfreedom.com or 518.570.6164.