Dr. Shawn: (00:02)
Have you ever wondered? What do these people know that I don't know. How do I do it? How do I find my purpose, my passions? What if you could sit down with some of the wisest experts, everyday leaders and inspirational people who can answer your deepest questions. That is what we do here on the inspirational living podcast. We invite you to join us as we hold conversations, share wisdom, tips, and tools to inspire you, ignite your passions and vision for your life to awaken your sense of purpose and hope and leave. You inspired to design your best life. Join me, your host psychologist, Dr. Sean Horn, as we take you on an inspirational motivational and educational journey. So you can inspire by living an inspired life
TRANSCRIPT
Dr. Shawn: (01:01)
Today. Talking with Stephanie Mara Fox, a sematic nutritional counselor, who helps us look at our relationship with food from a whole different perspective than what we typically are hearing out there in the community. I loved this message. I thought it was so full of wisdom and nuggets that we can take away to help us on our health journey. Let me share with you a little bit more about Stephanie. Before we begin. Stephanie Mara Fox supports women coaches and wellness professionals and feeling empowered and satiated in their relationship with their food body and business, to cultivate more confidence and create the life they desire to be living. She teaches the tools as sematic eating and her eating needing sensing system to support individuals with weight and body image concerns, stress eating, binge eating digestive issues, and creating peace around old wounds. She has worked with health coaches and wellness professionals and bolstering their confidence to create successful businesses.
Dr. Shawn: (02:10)
She has her master's degree and body psychotherapy is a certified mind body eating coach and a yoga instructor. She has been published in the international journal of body psychotherapy and somatic psychotherapy. Today. She is the creator of the program, satiated satisfying or physical and emotional hungers and the host of the podcast. Satiated. You can find her on her social media, her website, her podcast, where she offers all sorts of services to her audience, whether it is listening to her podcasts, participating in her groups, taking an online class or working with her one-on-one she has so much to offer. I hope that you enjoy this episode and please at the end, so you can hear more about what services she has to offer you.
Dr. Shawn: (03:04)
I'm going to jump right in and begin this conversation with Stephanie.
Dr. Shawn: (03:10)
What is Somatic nutrition first?
Stephanie Mara Fox: (03:14)
What is the word somatic like? That's probably the first question that I get asked a lot. So somatic means relating to the body as something separate from the mind. And so a lot of the work that I do around teaching individuals, the tools of somatic eating means tuning into your body to discover what foods resonate with your unique system, by attending to your sensations and bodily reactions. So what I often find is that we are so bombarded with mixed messages on what to eat, how to eat when deed that we've kind of lost a connection with our body and our bodily cues, and actually relying more on ourselves and trusting our body that it's going to tell us when and why and how, and what is going to be most supportive to our unique system so that you actually don't ever have to rely on an external cue ever again, because only your body can tell you what it needs. And when the
Dr. Shawn: (04:16)
Key that you mentioned there is to trust your, yourself and your body. I know coming out of a lifetime of dieting, I was given this message that I cannot trust my body, that my body will hijack me. It will take me down a road that somehow, and this is where the shame comes in. Somehow I'm unique in that I can not eat that cake, or I cannot have those chips because I will gain 15, 20 pounds or so. And then we experience this, yo-yo stuff losing weight, gaining weight. So then we believe what we're told that we can't trust ourselves to gain that trust or to even consider it. It's such a stretch for those that believe they can not trust their body.
Stephanie Mara Fox: (04:58)
Yeah. You know, everything that kind of the dieting world has set up is that we can't trust our body. I saw a meme at one point, that was like, the dieting industry is the greatest gas lighter. Just like, you know, they always say that like, we're the fault that if we try something and it's not working that actually that's on us, not on like this diet will never ever work for you. I mean, if diets worked, we wouldn't be talking about this anymore. That's why I really love to teach those I work with is okay, how do we come back into the body and even cultivate a sense of safety and the system that we're in so that you can start to hear the bodily cues again, because it can actually take time. So what I'm talking about, I'm like, oh, just listen to your body.
Stephanie Mara Fox: (05:45)
Like also kind of a hard thing to do. So it can actually take time to be like, okay, what are all of the factors that are maybe getting in the way of hearing your bodily messages so that we get to kind of work through those first, you know, a sense of shame. That's a big one, you know, of all of the beliefs that you may be received from childhood and early on in your life and have built up to today of like, why it feels hard to trust yourself and listen to your body. We kind of have to sometimes work through those first so that you can start hearing your bodily messages again.
Dr. Shawn: (06:19)
Yes. And is there a chemical component to that too, where the body loses its way so to speak and we have to help it to become sensitive to those cues, those chemical cues of hunger and being full.
Stephanie Mara Fox: (06:32)
Yes. Like, uh, obviously, you know, individuals have heard her probably about like Greenland and leptin and all of these things that, yes, there are many things that can throw those things off. Uh, what I often think of. So, uh, my background is I've done a lot of research on the gut brain. And so we have, what's called the vagus nerve in our body. And it's kind of like the highway of communication between our head brain and our gut brain. And this highway can get hijacked, basically it's connected to our parasympathetic nervous system. And so if we are not in a relaxation response, if we have experienced trauma in our life, if we have experienced, uh, situations, uh, that have kind of, it hasn't felt safe to be in our body. So it feels actually safer to beat disembodied. It actually is harder for our body to communicate with each other, to actually feel those fullness and hunger cues. And so, yes, there is something physiologically happening in the body. And a lot of the time when I'm supporting my clients with is like, okay, how do we do some like vagel toning and like actually support the body and feeling safe again so that we can more easily hear our hunger and fullness cues. And it starts with just feeling safe in this system. If we cannot feel safe, if we are in a fight or flight response, and we feel like we need to be running from a tiger, it just throws everything off.
Dr. Shawn: (07:57)
Yeah. So you're talking about when we're under trauma, we program ourselves to numb out to our body could disconnect from it. So then we don't recognize when we're full, hungry, tired, stress, tension, those kinds of things. So you are bringing in that con that polyvagal theory about the vagus nerve and how it relates to the nervous system and how we can use that to bring our defenses down and reconnect in a safe way with our body. So what is this vagal tone? Everyone in polyvagal is talking about that and trauma work. What is your vagal tone? So help us understand that.
Stephanie Mara Fox: (08:33)
Yeah, so some tricks that I offer my clients to basically, um, when we activate and kind of tone our Vegas nerve, it actually supports us in going more into the parasympathetic nervous system, which is basically just your relaxation response and that everything kind of flows much more easily when we feel relaxed. So like that's where it all starts is like, okay, we need to be in a relaxation response, anything that you want to heal and your relationship with your food and body has to start from a place of relaxation. Specifically,
Dr. Shawn: (09:07)
What I've learned is when you are in that green zone, that parasympathetic zone relaxed, you digest better, you absorb your nutrition better, you process blood sugars better. So the metabolism is working in your favor, but when you're in that yellow zone or red zone of, of fight and flight and freeze, that it messes with your blood sugar and your digestion. And so you get a lot of gut issues, right?
Stephanie Mara Fox: (09:33)
Absolutely. So I spent a decade healing, my own digestive issues. So I know a lot about this. Yes.
Dr. Shawn: (09:41)
Yeah. So that's what I'm hearing you say about how it flows better. And you're talking about that.
Stephanie Mara Fox: (09:46)
Yeah, absolutely. So, uh, some of the things that I offer those I work with around like vocal toning are, uh, humming, uh, gurgling, even singing and whistling, uh, splashing your face with cold water. You know, it doesn't, it, these are the not like big things. Um, even this is why like chewing, like chewing your food more actually helps activate the vagus nerve. And so like even when you're actually eating, the more that we choose, the more that that meal actually feels relaxing to our body.
Dr. Shawn: (10:16)
Interesting. So you, these exercises will help you bring in a relaxed state so you can connect with your food, but absorb it better and so forth. How did you clean and heal your gut with all of these, those years?
Stephanie Mara Fox: (10:31)
I found in both my work with myself and my work with my clients is like, I did all the things at the beginning. I was following like all the like quote unquote right diets and like, you know, getting in the probiotics and, uh, seeing all the, the doctors that I could see and, you know, I really had a hard time finding some clear guidance. So it was a lot of experimentation. It was a lot of testing things out on my body, which is why I feel like I have such a solid communication with my body now because I really had to be like, okay, well, how does this meal and digest for you? And then like observe and know, and data point and like, okay, thank you for giving me that information like that did not work for you. And I think one of the bigger things was actually working with what my emotional body was holding on to.
Stephanie Mara Fox: (11:17)
So, like I said before, we have this gut brain and it's not just digesting our food. It's also digesting our life experiences. And so there was a lot of just early on life experiences that I had that my body was holding onto. And so I really had to take time to digest and assimilate those life experiences. And that was actually, I feel like more of the crucial part of my healing, then the food piece, because ultimately working through those emotional traumas that my body was holding onto, supported my body and going into relaxation response where then I could work here, what foods did or did not resonate with my system. And I started to digest much easier because I wasn't as much in a stress response constantly anymore. So it's all interrelated and connected.
Dr. Shawn: (12:10)
Yeah. I love how you said that digest life experience. What, what methods does one do to digest that emotional congestion that's in your body?
Stephanie Mara Fox: (12:21)
Yeah. So at the time I was doing kind of more of this deeper, intense healing. I was really working with a somatic therapist. And for anybody who's looking for a somatic therapist, you know, I'm pretty sure there's some in like the psychology today, directory, you can also look up somatic experiencing and you can also find a somatic experiencing practitioner. Uh, there's a huge directory there as well. She honestly had me get into my body. It was a little bit of last like talk therapy. I actually just recently wrote about this on my social media feeds of like, there was this one session that it was literally like lying on the floor, like having to breathe into my belly and like, imagine what is in there. And at the time, like, all I could see was just this kind of black hole in my digestive tract.
Stephanie Mara Fox: (13:11)
It just felt deep and dark. And there was nothing there, there was no light, there was no color. And so it took some time actually with imagery and even just like a lot of crying, just when yes, it went beyond verbal, it went beyond logic and reason. And I actually had to get out of my head. Like I knew some of the things that I needed to process, but every muscle of our being actually holds on to our history of our past. And so it was actually getting into the muscles, into the digestive tract of my body and being like, what is there, what is my body holding onto? And I remember just like crying and sobbing and it goes beyond of just like, I don't even know what I'm exactly crying about, but my body feels so sad. And so as I just let my body grieve, like I talk a lot about body grieving as well.
Stephanie Mara Fox: (14:08)
My body got to heal on a very different level than like on a mental status. And sometimes we have to say goodbye to the things that our body has been holding onto, or even like the patterns and the habits that we've been in acting because of a ways that we thought that those habits or patterns would protect us in some way. Like, I really see that all of our habits, they show up for a reason, they're there to protect us. They're there to support us and feeling safe in the world. And that actually, we have to think those patterns that we realize aren't really supporting us anymore in our life, but we have to thank them for showing up because they really supported us at a time when we needed them. Yes, indeed. And so, uh, it was kind of like saying, okay, like, thank you so much for being the way that you were. Thank you so much for like my digestive tract for talking to me so loudly through digestive pain and actually appreciate those symptoms for showing up so that I could breathe, release them. Because when we are healing, we're actually like changing on a cellular level. There is a new expression of ourselves that is trying to be birthed. And so we have to kind of give space to say goodbye to a former expression of ourselves to step into something new [inaudible].
Dr. Shawn: (15:24)
This radically changed the way I approach therapy and the way I think, as a psychologist, when I started to learn about the sematic approach and specifically when I was learning about polyvagal theory and it really emphasizing that we don't need to process verbally necessarily that it is in our body. We have to trust that when the body releases that it knows what it's doing and we don't always have to know why. And I think psychology has historically emphasized. You need to know why and you have to process it and talk about it. And we're saying, no, just let it go. And I've been using the analogy of like gas, it's like psychological gas, and you've got this big, this big fart in you, you know,
Dr. Shawn: (16:07)
And you got to get it out. So just let it out and you'll feel so much better. Right. And so
Dr. Shawn: (16:13)
Crying is a releasing of gas and, uh, those things that we do with our body to excrete, it is so important, shaking, dancing, running, moving, things like that. And that's that bagel tone you were talking about. Yeah. And learning how to distrust that body's process. So that is very, very powerful work. It's it's like changing my mind so much. I feel like I'm learning Chinese or something. It's just such a big paradigm shift after doing psychology all these years and then wow. Bodywork.
Stephanie Mara Fox: (16:48)
Oh, like our body's talking to us because like, yeah. And it's, um, yes, it can be important sometimes to understand, but exactly what you're saying that sometimes it's just like, actually I don't have to fully verbally understand what's going on right now. I just have like, you get to kind of be like, okay, my body's feeling something like, I even sometimes like to take labels away from emotions and say like, okay, let's actually like, okay, we're labeling this as anxiety. Let's maybe get curious here. What does that actually feel like in your body? If we took the label away from this being anxiety, like, okay, what are the sensations that are showing up? Okay. So you feel tightness in your chest. Hmm. Okay. Interesting. What do we want to do with that tightness? Do you need to like stretch out your arms and like really open it up or actually do you need to kind of curl in on your chest and like protect your chest or like hug it and soothe it. And so then it's just sensation and you get to play with it. You get to move it, you get to bring imagery to it. And there's a lot more sense of like, uh, just being approachable. Whereas if we put a label on this is what I'm feeling, then a lot of the concepts and our minds around what that feeling means gets brought up. [inaudible].
Dr. Shawn: (18:06)
So what comes to mind as I hear you talk about this is this idea, like there's all this noise that is keeping us from being able to hear what our hunger is wanting and sane. And so as you remove those noise barriers, you begin to tune in and then once you're tuned into your body, you can begin to eat and move in the way that the body needs. And then those layers, perhaps that are on people that are covering them, maybe, maybe, um, showing up as weight or showing up as health issues began to drift off. Is that how it, yeah.
Stephanie Mara Fox: (18:45)
A lot of the time I'm supporting a client in identifying the difference between physical and emotional hunger in their body. So I find that they, that these cues get crossed at a really young age, like, think about like when we're a baby, the first form of love we receive is from breast milk or from a bottle, like it's from food. Like we are in someone's arms and we're getting the experience of I'm being taken care of. I'm being seen, I'm being held, I'm getting food. That's our first form of love that we experience at a young age. And so as we get older, we actually have to kind of like uncross those wires a little bit that like food is love. Absolutely. And when it's, when we're so reliant on it, being our only form of the way of receiving pleasure and love and feel the feelings that we want to feel like being a sense of belonging or feeling seen or heard or held, you know, then like food is trying to satisfy in something that it can never really fully satisfy.
Stephanie Mara Fox: (19:49)
Like I make this analogy a lot with my clients of like, okay, if we just see food as a tool, okay. Like this tool, it's like really great at being used for physical hunger. It's like the perfect tool. That's the tool you want to use for that. And like, you know, it can sometimes be used for emotional hunger, but it's kind of like when you are using a wrench, but really you need a hammer, you know, it's just like, it's not quite doing the job, you know, it's identifying like, okay, am I feeling physical hunger right now and emotional hunger right now. And what does that feel like? What is the difference in your body? A lot of the time I noticed that so first physical hunger, it wants anything. It's just like, your energy feels low. Your brain feels kind of foggy. You might be getting like stomach gurgles and it's not very picky.
Stephanie Mara Fox: (20:40)
Like the body's like, just feed me. I just need something to keep going. Whereas emotional hunger it's, uh, it's very sudden it comes on very quickly and it's very specific. I need this thing. You have to feed me this thing right now. And so when, when the kind of like, and I experienced this too, I'm like, Hmm, that's really interesting that you want this thing. Why might that be? And you get to kind of bring in some curiosity of like, okay, if you ate that food, taking a pause, what do you think you would get from eating that food? And so you get to start to tune into your emotional body of like, I really want self-soothing right now. Or I really just want to have fun or I'm bored. And I'm just like, I'm using this food. Cause I like want to satisfy this, you know, sense of boredom.
Stephanie Mara Fox: (21:27)
And then it's like, okay, food, totally, no judgment, no shame, no guilt that like, you could totally still eat the food. Absolutely. That gets to be on your tools. It's a tool in your toolbox, but you also get to start to explore. Is there another tool in your toolbox, like your self-care tool box that could satisfy the emotional hunger in a different way that will actually satisfy you more? Long-term I have often found that when we're trying to use food to satisfy an emotional hunger, it doesn't really satisfy the emotional hunger, long-term, the emotion that's still wanting your attention afterwards. It's still there
Dr. Shawn: (22:05)
And looking at food also as the nutrition that your body needs just this morning, I was talking to, I have this coach that's helping me with creating eCourses. Her name is Stephanie Hilberry. And I was telling her about our podcasts. And she said that she had come across some meme or something that was saying, or talk about, it's not that you don't want to eat that candy, let's say, but when you eat the candy or you eat the food that doesn't have good nutritional value, then your body gets satisfied. So it doesn't reach for the nutrition. It really needs. And I remembered raising my kids that I would say, no, we're not going to eat this dessert beforehand or this candy, because you need to have nutrition first because your body needs that to grow. And then you can have those sweet things. So it's prioritizing nutrition. Like what does my body need to function well,
Stephanie Mara Fox: (23:01)
Yeah. You know, I always like the focus of it, especially because I'm not about the dieting industry whatsoever said, it's like what the diet dieting industry talks about is like taking things out. You know, it's just like, it's all about restriction and willpower and you know what you can and cannot eat. And I learned about like, yeah, yeah.
Dr. Shawn: (23:23)
Rules about food. Yeah. I wonder how we would define diet culture because one of the things that you and I, when we were prepping for the show talked about was how, um, we've, we've targeted diet culture so much that, that is shame bound. That that is problematic, that it, on the flip side, if we're pursuing health or nutrition, that somehow that's getting stigmatized or stereotype that that's diet culture, but it's, there is a distinction that you can pursue health and wellness and fitness and, uh, those things and not have it be diet culture. So how would you distinguish the pursuit of health versus diet culture, like defining diet culture?
Stephanie Mara Fox: (24:11)
Yeah. So, um, just first that just ending that thought of like, I like to focus on the addition of things of like, what can you add in not necessarily what you need to take out? So like what you're talking about, like, okay, we're going to focus on the nutritional piece first and it's not that like, desserts are bad. Like you get to have those too, you know, it's about finding your, your unique balance and, but like focusing on, okay, what would I add into this meal to fake, make it feel very nourishing and grounding to my unique system. And I think in regards to kind of like the, the dieting industry it's, um, it goes back to like creating intention. I talk about this a lot that it's just like, okay, what is my intention here? And is my intention bringing me closer to myself or further away from myself.
Stephanie Mara Fox: (25:03)
So, okay. If you want to, you know, pick up a new kind of physical movement and I'd like to say physical movement instead of exercise, because you know, physical movement, it's like, okay, we, we thrive moving our bodies. And I think when we use the word exercise, we get in this idea of everything, again, that all the stories we've been told of like, okay, you need to like exercise for an hour, like every day. And like you get all of these like kind of confusing messages that come up in your head. So that's why I like to kind of use physical movement because it goes back into connecting with your body. Hey buddy, how do you want to physically move today? And so you get to kind of start to trust, like, okay, how does this physical movement make me feel? All right. If let's say, for example, you want to start lifting weights, like do it with the intention of it supports you in feeling the way you want to feel in your body.
Stephanie Mara Fox: (25:57)
And it goes from an internal place instead of an external place of, oh, I should do this kind of physical movement because it's going to make me look a certain way that I've been told I'm supposed to look. And so when we're doing physical movement from that kind of place, it gets really confusing and actually puts our body into a stress response where we won't actually receive the benefits of physical movement. We're trying to do which like physical moving, physically moving our body supports us in entering into a relaxation response when it's the physical movement that feels nourishing to us. So this is where like, again, we get to kind of release all the rules, all the regulations that kind of dieting and the dieting industry sets up because it comes back to you are a unique person. You are at a unique time in your life.
Stephanie Mara Fox: (26:50)
And even what is going to work for you now is not going to work five years from now. It's not going to work 10 years from now. So that's why I really like to teach tuning back into the body because when it shifts and changes and it's like this physical movement isn't working for us anymore, or you know what, the way that you've been eating, I know it worked for us for this period of time. And actually I'm going to start sending you some symptoms to tell you this isn't working for us anymore. So we actually get to befriend our Cynthia symptoms and say like, oh, thank you so much for showing up. You need something different, don't you, this isn't working for us anymore. And a lot of the time we say like, oh my gosh, I'm doing something wrong instead of like, oh thank you so much body for talking to me. Okay. We need something different now. And then you just get to flow. You get to be in the flow with your body. That it's not going to be the same forever. Like the way that we fed ourselves at like 18 years old is not going to be the same way we feed ourselves when we're like 30 or 40 or 50. Yes.
Dr. Shawn: (27:47)
Yeah. I learned that women over 40 need high, more fat. I read some article that Harvard did a research and found that all those diets at once worked for women to you name it, they had it on the list from Atkins to all those kinds of things that they would not lose weight after 40. And they found that once they added healthy fats and may did that, like ketogenic method of having 70% of your nutrition from fat, that the weight was melting off of women. And when I, when I read that I was in my late forties. And so I started incorporating the fats and no kidding. It just weight would move differently on me than it did beforehand. So we do have different nutritional needs at different stages of life.
Stephanie Mara Fox: (28:38)
Yeah. For anybody who's listening to this, I would highly recommend checking out a list of VT. And that's a L I S a, uh, the ITT. So she's written two books on cycle sinking, and I absolutely love this woman's work. It is just like life-changing, especially for women. And so what she really talks about is like, okay, so everything that we're seeing in our culture has a lot of the time been set up off of a man's hormonal cycle, like, okay, testosterone kind of does the same thing day in and day out, starts off high. Okay. Workday, beginning of the Workday, even like how we are productive all off of a man's hormonal cycle starts to go down as the day goes down. And so then they get off at five o'clock when their testosterone levels are the lowest, they take a break, they rest, they start again at their peak levels of testosterone again.
Stephanie Mara Fox: (29:35)
So we've made a very different, we ha we're in a very different hormonal cycle from week to week. And so what she talks about is how we actually need to start to cycle sync, and then even like the ways that we're eating or the ways that we're physically moving our body has to be paired with where we are in our cycle. And so, you know, that's for a woman through her menstrual years, and then she starts to talk about, you know, how to cycle sync in a very different way when you're going through your menopausal years. So, uh, you know, it's, I think that I'm really excited that more of this research is starting to come out. And I think that's why it's specifically been so confusing, especially for women, because we just need something very different because we have a very different body than a man's body in this world.
Dr. Shawn: (30:27)
Yes. I like how you pointed out that the difference between the diet culture and pursuing health is the intention that if you're coming at it, as I need to get rid of this thing for, from me, so that I'm okay with your focus on appearance management, your focus on moving away from something about you. So it's very shame-based in that way. Versus the pursuing health is I'm motivated to love my body to feed it, what it needs to move it in the way that it needs. And I just want to have the best quality of life that I can. So in that frame of mind, you're saying, you're moving towards what you want to create versus diet culture. You're moving away from what you want to get rid of, so to speak. And you're bringing in this wisdom that there are unique things at different stages of our life, different cycles like this author.
Dr. Shawn: (31:25)
I can't wait to learn about this cycle sinking that you are blowing with yourself differently and your body will function better. And in my own story that I truly discovered to be true. I found that every time I would freak out and panic, because I had shame about my body weight and my history of dieting. So shame I say is social trauma. So I had a trauma response to weight gain, and it would panic me. I would get hypervigilant by stepping on the scale more than once a day, measuring my body with inch. You know, those measure tapes, um, documenting things, going on, some diet, all this kind of stuff. When I freak out, I would go, oh, I got to do those vigorous exercises. And I go to those gyms and workout hard, those core fit kind of stuff. And every time I did, I would gain rapid weight.
Dr. Shawn: (32:20)
And so the fitness people would say, oh, that's muscle. And I think that is not muscle something's wrong. I get tired after working out, I was not energized. I would yawn while I was working out, which now I know yawning is a stress response. It's one of the it's like the gas is one way we can get gas out. So I didn't know I was traumatizing my body and this core fit thing, my body was protecting itself. And when I had that moment of critical moment in my life, where I looked at it and said, okay, I've been dieting and doing this for 40 years and it has not worked. So I'm going to take everything that I've done and I'm not going to do that anymore. So I just went through a fierce list of what is all my diet behavior is my thoughts.
Dr. Shawn: (33:02)
My, so I weighed myself. Okay. I will never weigh myself again. And it's been three years and I have not. I used to talk about what I was going to do to change my body. I will never talk about that again. And I didn't that I'm an announce. I go on a diet. I'm not dieting. You know, I just went through that. And so I thought, well, before I would work out in this way, that was for that they were telling me to, but now I'm going to move my body in fun ways. So I started thinking, what's fun. What do I enjoy to do? And I started to work towards that. But when I did was instead of working out, I thought I just need to move. So I would gently walk around the block, literally just around my block, gently walk. And all of a sudden, I, my jeans were too big for me and I'm going, what's going on?
Dr. Shawn: (33:49)
And all of a sudden I needed a new bra and I'm like, what's going on? And
Dr. Shawn: (33:53)
I mean, literally the weight was melting off just by gentle walks. Like I wasn't even vigorously walking. It wasn't walking in any of the ways that diet culture tells me to walk. I was like, just paying attention. I'm too tired today. So, all right, I'll just stroll. And maybe I just need to sleep because I'm so tired. And today I have a lot of energy, so I'm going to walk vigorously and I'm going to go on a hard hike because I want to. So I was moving in all these different ways and my body was responding so positively. So that's a testimony to what you're saying, that the recipe that they're getting for movement is not what we need to pay attention to. We need to pay attention to our cues. You have, do I need a stroll? Do I need a jog? Do I need a hike, something along those lines.
Stephanie Mara Fox: (34:42)
Yeah. And then not judging it. You know, I feel like we try to override the messages that we're receiving as well, where we're like, oh, you just want to walk today. Shouldn't we do something more intense. Like we tried like talk back to our body and our body's like, no, I really just want to do a gentle walk today. Can we just do that? So it's, it's also like entering back into also that sense of trust that it's like, okay, like trusting, this is where your energy levels are today. And if you actually just honor, all right, it's okay. This actually, isn't a problem. Like thank you so much body for telling me that our energy levels are a little bit low, but a walk, a walk would feel very nourishing. Let's go do that. That then you're in communication with your body. You're actually telling your body there's no, there's nothing in danger around us right now.
Stephanie Mara Fox: (35:29)
Like if we actually force ourselves to do those more rigorous movements, when our body doesn't want that, it thinks we're in danger. Oh, do we need to be running away from something? Do we need to be holding on to, you know, uh, weight, for example, because like over in a stress response and like, we don't know when the next time a meal's going to come or whatever it is that we have to protect ourselves from something. So the more that we guide the body back into that relaxation response, by listening to it, trusting the messages, it is sending us, it actually gets us to where we want to go, but it feels very counterintuitive. So like beautiful work that you did to be like, okay, here are all the things that I'm doing. I've done them for so long. So that hasn't gotten me to where I wanted to go. So everything that is on this list, I'm going to do the exact opposite.
Dr. Shawn: (36:15)
Yes. And I found that cortisol was my enemy, that anything that raised my cortisol level was linked to my weight gain. And just so the listeners know, I, when I made this change, it, I had jumped on that bandwagon of no body shame and no diet culture. And so I was embracing myself as I was gaining a lot of weight and I fully loved myself. I mean, I was over 300 pounds and I felt sexy. I felt beautiful, attractive. I was at peace. I had done that work, but all of a sudden my knees stopped working. And all of a sudden I couldn't run across the street when the light turned red and I was hurting and I got scared. And so I thought I need to make a health change. And that's when I realized that making a health change does not mean I'm going into that body shaming.
Dr. Shawn: (37:08)
It means I'm really caring for myself, but I had to learn to do it differently. I didn't, I didn't know how to do it. So when I started to just do the opposite of what I had done before, and just really try to tune in and what works, what doesn't in terms of what feels good, what doesn't I knew I needed to move. So I incorporated that those walks, and I would say the learning curve took me about that long to learn how to eat different types of nutrition, how to cook differently. But because I was pursuing health, I wasn't panicking. Cause I wasn't, uh, I didn't have a sense of urgency to see the scale different, to see the clothes different. I was releasing that and just trusting that things will unfold in the way they will. And so people would say to me all the time, how did you do it with diet? Are you on? And I really discovered how obsessed big as a nation with dieting. And when I said to them, I don't know, I don't know what I weigh. I don't know. They would look
Dr. Shawn: (38:08)
At me like, how do you got no, you know, how's that possible,
Dr. Shawn: (38:11)
But it really did inspire a lot of people to pursue this differently and do it differently than what we've been told.
Stephanie Mara Fox: (38:20)
I mean, look, I am a proponent of the anti diet movements and the health at every size movement. I do believe that is possible. And I think that what these movements ultimately give is they support people in entering into that relaxation response. And that is like, we're talking about today, that is so important to enter into. So it's like, okay, if I actually like all of the, the force, like we kind of have to befriend food first, like exactly what you kind of did where you're like, okay, I have to first like, just let this all go. Like let all go all of the rules and the regulations. And like, I'm just gonna eat food. I'm just going to eat. And that's why I think that this is why these movements are so important because it's kind of just saying, okay, I embrace that. I have a body, I have a body in this body needs to eat food to be alive.
Stephanie Mara Fox: (39:08)
So we kind of get to simplify the eating experience. First of like, just eat, eat whatever you want to even sometimes so that you can notice. Okay. Interesting. All right. I eat a piece of cake for lunch today. All right. How did that feel in your body now? And then if the goal is health, like, okay. So eating a piece of cake is for lunch, made me feel tired. Uh, made me feel light-headed made me feel kind of blood sugary. Like I kind of crashed in the afternoon. All right. So that's information. No good. No bad, no, right. No wrong. It's just like, okay. It's just information. All right, great. So now you have this information. Oh, is that how you want to feel in your body? Do you want to feel tired and kind of your blood sugar levels crash and you have a hard time thinking clearly, and it's like hard to get things done in your day.
Stephanie Mara Fox: (39:56)
Like, okay. If it was just information, no judgment. Is that the way you want to be navigating your day? And often the easy answer is like, well, no. So it's like, okay, so now you have the information, you have a choice, you know, if you eat cake for lunch, that that's the way it's going to make you feel. So it gets to be more from an empowered choice instead of like, oh, someone's telling me to do this. It's like, actually, I'm choosing not to do this because I'm putting the care in the vitality of my body first. And I actually don't want to feel the way that eating a piece of cake makes me feel for lunch and I'm going to eat something different. That's going to help me make me feel the way I want to feel in my body. Yeah.
Dr. Shawn: (40:37)
And sometimes we have the cake and we'd felt fine. You know, I heard a speaker once on a podcast say that when you're happy, when you're celebrating, like you're at a wedding or something like that. And you eat cake that your body won't hold on to it and you don't gain weight because you're eating it when you're happy. And that just stunned me. And I started to think about camping because I thought, whenever you go camping, what do we do? We're having licorice. We're having smores. We're having chili with Fritos. We're eating all that, that junky camping food. Right. But everyone I've asked this question to that, eats like that. When they go camping, I said, do you ever gain weight when you go camping and everyone pauses and they go, well, actually, no.
Dr. Shawn: (41:22)
I think how is that possible that we're camping?
Dr. Shawn: (41:25)
And we're eating just wild amounts of calories where I'm eating all the foods that normally we make the enemy and yet it, our body just releases it. And today's discussion is solving that mystery for me because I'm realizing, because we're in the green light, we're parasympathetic, we're, we're relaxed and we're in the trees. So we get all those good ions. I forget if it's negative or positive, but it's the kind that our body thrives off of that comes up. Do you know that negative? Positive?
Stephanie Mara Fox: (41:55)
I can't remember which one, but I know like tree bathing, it's like big thing. Yeah. And it's
Dr. Shawn: (42:00)
Not new age. It's like, it's real. We really get a certain, um, uh, thing to our body that our body likes water does that as well. So we are getting this healing environment. We're at peace in our mind. So our body is processing this food differently. And that's why we can, we can eat like that camping, but we cannot, when we're in a work week, we'll feel awful. And our body will get congested and bloated and so forth. So it just depends. Like I've had times where the cake and the chocolate were just fine and other times where I just wipe me out. Yeah.
Stephanie Mara Fox: (42:37)
So the other thing that I really love to explore is like all the other pieces that affect our ability to digest something. So sometimes I'm having, uh, someone I work with, I get really curious about like, okay, what is, what are the thoughts that you're thinking in your head back in cut, put, shut down our digestion just by thinking, like kind of like, I shouldn't be eating this thoughts, like puts us in a stress response. Our body thinks that like our body hears the words we're telling it. And it thinks that it's in danger and like, oh, why should I digest this easily? If you're telling me I shouldn't eat this. Or like, what's the environment like, okay, are we, you know, driving on the way to work and like eating at the same time when we're super stressed out, maybe we're running late, not probably going to digest that food very easily.
Stephanie Mara Fox: (43:24)
So there's actually a lot of factors that affect our ability to assimilate our nutrition. And I see this over and over again that I like I'll have someone go on vacation for example. And they say, I ate all the foods that I normally tell myself, I shouldn't eat in my daily life. And I'm just like, you know what? I'm on vacation. I'm going to go eat this. And they eat it with like full acceptance in a relaxation response. And they're just like, I was fine. I digested it fine. I even like maybe lost weight on this vacation. And they're just so confused about that. And it's, it's the relaxation response. It really is such a huge factor in just how our body, our body's ability to thrive and function optimally. And so, like, I totally understand everything that you're talking about right now that it's, it's not always the food itself. It's sometimes the way that we're eating that food. Like we could be eating the healthiest foods on the planet, but if we're eating them in a stress response, we're actually not assimilating them.
Dr. Shawn: (44:23)
And I wanted to enjoy my food. One of the critical moments that was so exciting for me, it was a time I decided to French fries and I really wanted French fries. So I went to a fast food place that had what it used to be my favorite French fries. And I got it and I've been into them and my taste had changed. It tasted chemicals, really. It tasted like it didn't have flavor to it. It was not enjoyable. And so I thought, I'm not eating this. It's not enjoyable. I want fries that are enjoyable. So I threw them away, which was unheard of because before I would have thought, I'm not going to get French fries again. So I better eat these all right. Now today's my binge day. I'll start again tomorrow. And so I threw them away, like totally without any sort of care concern.
Dr. Shawn: (45:11)
And then I went to another place that I knew had some good fries and I ordered fries and they were delicious and I enjoyed them. So I started having the experience of eating a hamburger and halfway through I was done and I threw it away. Cause I knew when I'm ready to have another one, I'll just have another one. There was no sense of urgency or I can't have this again. So it gave me so much freedom to have what I want, but if I'm going to do that, I want to really enjoy it. So if I'm eating on my drive, I'm not able to take that time to savor it and, and enjoy it. Like I would sitting at a table and taking my time and so forth. So it really changed the way I approach food and the, and the selection of it. Cause I wanted to enjoy it.
Stephanie Mara Fox: (45:58)
Yeah, there's a woman. Uh, her name is Linda Craighead head and she created a work, a workbook called the appetite awareness workbook and she created a term called effective emotional eating. And uh, in my role, I'm actually trying to not call it emotional, eating as much because if we actually think about it, we are emotional beings. We are always feeling something. So actually every single eating experience we have is an emotional eating experience. Even if we're eating from like contentment or joy or whatever it might be. So I'm trying to use the term like stress eating a little bit more, but her term specifically, cause it's E effective emotional eating. So what she talks about is exactly what you're talking about right now. It's actually cultivating awareness of, okay, I am choosing food right now for an emotional purpose. I want this on some emotional reason and that's okay.
Stephanie Mara Fox: (46:54)
I am totally allowed to eat food for an emotional reason. And it's actually coming into your body feeling empowered in the experience and owning it, being like, okay, I am choosing to eat this food and noticing when do I feel emotionally satisfied? So if like you weren't maybe really physically hungry, but you're choosing to eat anyway. You're not going to really get the like physical, physical cue of, I feel full right now because you already kind of maybe really didn't need the food to begin with. So you actually notice when do I feel emotionally grounded? And so it's like, okay, you ate the fries. You felt really grounded physically and emotionally you owned it, you ate it. This was a Joyable pleasurable experience. Like food isn't meant to actually be a pleasurable experience that we get to have living in a body. And then you got to move on with your life.
Stephanie Mara Fox: (47:46)
It wasn't something that when we go into like judgment and shame that it perpetuates, oh my gosh, why did I eat that? Then it like, you know, spills over to the next day. Oh my gosh, I need to make up for this for eating it. And then one isolated little moment that you could have been like, that was so great. Those French fries are like really yummy. I'm so glad I had that experience. And just like moved on suddenly is like a 48, 72 hour thing that you're still processing. So actually it's a much more grounding experience to the body when we just own it, embrace it, love it. And then like, be like, okay, now I'm going to move on. And like with my day and what else do I need to emotionally nourish myself with? Yes.
Dr. Shawn: (48:27)
Yes. Wow. And when you mentioned the emotional, I fought that word does have, um, a stigma attached to it that when people say emotion, like that's negative just by saying that word versus seeing it neutrally that emotional or emotion is not, it's just a neutral concept. Yeah. Just by nature people go, oh, I'm, I'm doing something wrong. So I'm emotionally eating. Yeah. Yeah.
Stephanie Mara Fox: (48:54)
We are emotional beings probably even within like, you know, we've been talking almost for an hour now. I've probably felt like a ton of different emotions in my body. It's like emotional big. That just is like, that is just what happens. But when we actually embrace and befriend and accept our emotions, they get to be our allies. They get to be our guides. And we also get to notice how, like, they don't really last long-term, they're very transient. They come, they go, they increase, they decrease. I kinda like to see them as like waves where it's like, okay, the more that we actually avoid them, the bigger the emotional title wave gets where that emotion is going to grow over time and actually feel more intense to experience when we finally turn around and face it. Whereas it gets to be like much more gentle or waters where we're like, oh yeah, there goes fear. Oh, there goes anxiety. Oh, I'm feeling joy right now. Great. That's a good one. And like, we just kind of like, just observe and notice like clouds kind of passing on in the sky that it's, we get to kind of flow with them a lot easier. And you're right on that. I think that there's so much stigma around doing something because we feel emotional. Okay. We'll like own it. You are a human being in a body that is constantly feeling,
Dr. Shawn: (50:11)
Yes. That's giving yourself permission to be human. And that's one of the steps to healing. Our shame is really correcting our understanding of what it means to be human what's normal, natural, and appropriate and not making our natural needs our responses bad, but knowing that's what we do, that's what our bodies do. That's what everyone does. It's not good, bad, right wrong. It just is. So really we want to look at effectiveness, what is effective or ineffective versus judging things. And that's what you're describing here in that approach. Like what works, what doesn't work. And that's all it is. You're not bad. Your body's not bad. In fact, your body has been your, your warrior protecting you and working hard for you. So now we're going to have you get on the same page with your body and build a relationship that will help you with your healing. So tell it, go ahead.
Stephanie Mara Fox: (51:06)
Oh, I was just going to say, and also then you get choice. I think sometimes when we give our power away to our emotions that uh, it's like, we, we forget that we have a choice in saying like, oh, okay. So I'm feeling an emotion instead of just like having it, tell me what to do. It's like, okay, it's okay to feel worried right now, what I want to do with this worried feeling that you get to kind of be like, okay, what would be the best optimal choice for me right now? And so sometimes what I often find is like, okay, if we're trying to avoid the worry, the stress, the fear, the anxiety here comes food to try and self-sooth. But if we actually take a pause and be like, it's actually okay for me to feel this emotion right now, we take a pause and we give ourselves a choice. You can even write all your choices down. What are all the different ways that I could respond to fear right now that actually would support me longterm, not just in the moment, but also like help me navigate and flow with the sensations and the feelings of feeling fear with a lot more ease.
Dr. Shawn: (52:11)
Yes. Well, the last question I have for you is what is the difference between intuitive eating and sematic?
Stephanie Mara Fox: (52:20)
Yeah. So, uh, somatic eating is something that I have, uh, personally created and, uh, probably up and coming, writing a book on it. So stay tuned for that. Great. So I, I feel like the big difference is it actually is a deepening in, I was really actually thinking about this this past week that, you know, there was the first wave of mindful eating and then there was kind of intuitive eating. And I really see as somatic eating as kind of the next wave of like coming into your body, it's more of a bodily experience of eating. Whereas I think intuitive eating has a little bit more of the mental capacity coming into it of like a little bit more of assessing and kind of just, yeah, you're bringing your brain into it a little bit more. Medic eating is bringing your body into the experience and actually noticing if we take the brain away a little bit, not be choosing our foods so much from a brain space or, you know, I've had clients even find out that like, oh, they're sensitive to like blueberries, like something that like is, you know, old blueberries are a super food and like all these things and like, but you know what blueberries actually like they make my nose funny and like my throat gets scratchy and I'm just like, okay, this is your body talking to you.
Stephanie Mara Fox: (53:36)
I have one last interesting story. And in kind of showing an example of where somatic eating can go. And it was actually something that happened to me. I think at this point it was like two or three years ago. So I've never really been a big coffee drinker and there's always like a debate on like, is coffee good or bad for you? And I'm just like, okay. Let's like take the debate away for a second because everybody's body is unique. And so I, again, the caffeine, it can like, it makes me very jittery. I'm also a very, like, I'm already kind of an energetic person and never felt like I needed coffee. So I, then I discovered cold brew. Oh my gosh, it felt totally different in my body. I love the taste of it. I was like, oh, it felt so smooth. And it, I didn't get super jittery when I started drinking cold brew coffee.
Stephanie Mara Fox: (54:21)
So I started noticing, okay, like, I'm, you know, I'm drinking a little bit in the morning and then I'm drinking a little bit more. And then I start drinking cold brew, like every day. And you know, it just started to grow over time or it was really starting to become a part of every single day I was having. And I started getting this weird elbow pain in my right arm and I'm like, huh, that's kind of weird. Okay. So came out of nowhere. So first my first thing was like, okay, am I slouching? Like I started to attend to my posture and my typing wrong. Like, do I need to kind of get my wrists in a different position? Uh, it, you know, all the other things. Okay. Am I, you know, physically moving in a way that's irritating my elbow. I did not want to look at the coffee.
Dr. Shawn: (55:03)
And so finally I like explored all of these other things. So I was like, okay, Stephanie, it's been like a month now, your elbow pain. It hurts a lot. And I think it's time to look at the coffee. That's really the only thing that has changed in your nutritional intake. And so I was like, oh, okay. So I got over it. I was like taken out coffee for two weeks. And oftentimes why they say like doing an experiment for two weeks is there's a lot of things that change in your body that like your taste buds changed. Like every two weeks, the, your gut lining changes. I think it's like every, like two to five days or something. So like there's a lot that actually starts to heal when you take something out for two weeks in your body. So I'm like, okay, going to take two weeks, not going to drink coffee at all.
Stephanie Mara Fox: (55:46)
Elbow pain entirely goes away. Wow. Gone. So I was like, okay, I gotta, we ha I always kind of intuited the coffee didn't work for me. And that was like such a clear bodily sign that it's like, I haven't had elbow pain at all since then. Like, I haven't really gone back to drinking coffee. Maybe I'll have like a sip of cold brew every now and then. Cause I just do think it tastes really great, but I just, you know, it's like a once in a blue moon kind of thing at this point. Cause my body gave me the message that like, Hey, this doesn't work for us through elbow pain and it's gone like for two, three years that has not come back. So that's where I see somatic eating going, where I feel like kindness. Some of these other ways of eating kind of don't really go that deep into it.
Dr. Shawn: (56:34)
And it's really honoring that and like, yeah, I could totally keep drinking cold brew coffee. That is absolutely an option for me, but it's a choice it's like, okay, is it worth it to feel the elbow pain that kind of hurts a lot? And do I really want to live my life like that? Not really. So it just gets to be an empowered choice of, I took it out because my body is telling me a message that, that just doesn't resonate with my system. But it's also like giving yourself space to actually sit sometimes with like the symptom that's coming up and getting curious and being like, okay, what is this? Even here to teach me? Like, instead of seeing it as in the way, like, it is the way of just like, I have to go into this to actually learn, what is it, why is this popping up? What is this like, how is my body talking to me right now? What is the message and the wisdom and the lesson that's here to provide me with,
Dr. Shawn: (57:24)
It sounds like you're giving people actual tools on how to tune into the body so that you can eat intuitively. So it seems like a, uh, a path to get the intuitive eating in place.
Stephanie Mara Fox: (57:38)
Yes. I think that intuitive eating and mindful eating, it starts to give you like a little bit more understanding around even like the stories that are coming up or what's getting in the way of kind of slowing down with your meals. And then what I'm offering is a deepening into the body and your relationship with your body and tools on how to do that so that you can start eating from more of a bodily place instead of a mental place.
Dr. Shawn: (58:02)
So powerful. So tell us, where can people find you to do
Dr. Shawn: (58:06)
That? Aw first, my website is Stephanie mera.com. And you can also like if you had any questions about what we talked about today, my email address is [email protected] and that's M a R a and I have my own podcast as well. That's called Satiated podcast. It comes out every Saturday. So I also kind of introduce it as like welcome to satiated Saturdays every week. Uh, so that also comes out weekly as well, where I'm offering these kinds of these tricks and these tools of somatic eating. And that is awesome. Like a great place to start with because it's just there. Um, I'm going into my second season of that. So there's a whole, year's worth of content of somatic tools there. And, uh, then I have a Facebook group that's called, Satiated a hunger healing community and it's a private group. So if you have questions or you want just want to feel like kind of a little bit more held and seen and heard and what you're personally going through in your relationship with food and body, you can find that on Facebook asked to join and it's a private group so that I wanted to create a safe space for people to connect with one on one another and feel kind of held in what you're going through.
Stephanie Mara Fox: (59:18)
Because again, like we need to be in the relaxation response. And oftentimes we do that in community. We cannot heal alone. We need to heal with other people and know that we're not alone in what we're going through. And so that's why I really wanted to create that space. And then, you know, if you want to work with me, one-on-one all that information is also on my website as well.
Dr. Shawn: (59:39)
Yeah. And you also are mentoring other health coaches who want to learn to do this as well, right? Yeah.
Stephanie Mara Fox: (59:46)
So I have a mentorship for coaches and wellness professionals. And what I often find is that coaches will go through a whole certification program and feel like they're actually lacking in the tools to kind of get their client to where they need to go. And so I am offering them these tools that I teach and, uh, also providing supervision as well. So if you feel like you're just feeling stuck with your clients and you don't know where to go with them, next thing you don't know why your tools aren't working, you know, sometimes you just need to bounce ideas off of another person. And, uh, additionally, if you feel like I, I, I so believe in the message that I have to give because every wellness professional has such a unique gift and a unique message to bring out in the world. I also support individuals in like, okay, how do we get more people to know about your message and put it out there and how do we get more people to know about you? So, yeah, that's another offering that I have because I'm very passionate about the healing of people in this world. And so, you know, the more individuals who are offering their unique gifts into the world, the more opportunities that people who need their support get defined them. And, you know, it creates a ripple effect of just like what would happen if we weren't worrying about our food or body anymore and what sense of purpose could we lean into in our lives? And
Dr. Shawn: (01:01:04)
I'm so glad you're spreading this message and being a resource to people. So they can find that freedom and began to discover that they're their body is their friend. It's not working against them. And we need to just have a certain method to get there, to find that connection, that
Stephanie Mara Fox: (01:01:23)
Sense of freedom. Like that's what it's all about. Like your life is so much more than your day fee being completely filled of worries and concerns about what you look like and what you're eating and that when that gets to be actually less of a concern, like you have so much more space and time in your day to actually do the things you've always been wanting to be doing yes.
Dr. Shawn: (01:01:43)
And enjoy life, live wholeheartedly, enjoy your life and do it. So thank you so much for being on here today. I'll have all of your handles and information here in the show notes. So folks reach out to Stephanie and get connected and join us in this journey because you will not regret it. It is worth it. So thank you. Thank
Dr. Shawn: (01:02:06)
You for your time today. Thank you for joining us today. I hope this discussion was inspiring and uplifting to your journey. Please remember this podcast is for educational purposes only and is meant to substitute a relationship with a licensed mental health professional. Also make sure you rate the show, share with those, you know, and send us a shoutout. Please message me with any topics you would like me to address or questions you have on social media at Dr. Sean Horn or on my website. Thank you again. And maybe find joy in the journey and be richly blessed. [inaudible].
