Have you considered how a deepening connection to your body’s desire for food may impact your body’s sexual appetites as well? Longtime Opal therapist Tahney Jones, LMHC, CEDS joins Kara Bazzi, LMFT, CEDS and host Carter Umhau, LMHC in an exploratory conversation around the intersection of recovery from disordered eating and sex. (P.S. Though this conversation could feel applicable to all, we’re aware that it centers around a cis female perspective.)

Girls and Sex book by Peggy Orenstein  

In a culture that moralizes exercise and reveres star athletes, avoiding exercise can elicit discomfort (at best) and at worst, can induce loads of personal shame. In this episode, Kara Bazzi, LMFT, CEDS (Opal’s Co-Founder and head of the Exercise + Sport Program) and host Carter Umhau, LMHC will explore why people find themselves avoiding exercise and the barriers in moving towards a relationship of trust and attunement with movement and sport. Practical tools will be offered for listeners to be encouraged if they identify as avoidant.

When you come to terms with the fact that diets just don’t work, what comes next? Listen to your hunger and fullness! In this episode, Opal Co-Founder and Nutrition Director Julie Church, RDN, CEDRD, CD talks with host Carter Umhau, LMHC about what it looks like to eat from a place of attunement, rather than the rules and structures of one diet or another. Julie and Carter will walk through how to identify the cues of hunger and fullness, and how attunement in and of itself can ask you to stay an active participant in your relationship to food.

“Intuitive Eating” Evelyn Tribole, MS, RDN and Elyse Resch, MS, RDN, CEDRD, Fiaedp, FADA, FAND. 

“Moving Away from Diets” Karen Kratina, PhD, RD, 

Hunger Fullness scale  

Opal Hunger Fullness Image 

Love is in the air! Embrace new ways of thinking about the different kinds of love in your life by joining Opal’s “love tour.” All three of Opal’s Co-Founders--Julie Church, RDN, CEDRD, Kara Bazzi, LMFT, CEDS, and Dr. Lexi Giblin, PhD, CEDS--join host Carter Umhau, LMHC to explore “irrationally crazy love,” “limerence,” “radically open kindness,” and “amae"--terms for love that show up in all kinds of relationships, even beyond the romantic.

Envy shows up in all kinds of relationships, but how often does it actually make us closer to one another?  Host Carter Umhau, LMHC talks with Opal Co-Founders Kara Bazzi, LMFT, CEDS and Dr. Lexi Giblin, PhD, CEDS about their envy for one another and explore the ways in which their envy--after it almost created distance--brought them into a deeper relationship as business partners and friends. Plus, Lexi brings in her Radically Open DBT expertise to lay out the differences between helpful versus unhelpful envy!

Virginia Sole-Smith--author of The Eating Instinct: Food Culture, Body Image and Guilt in America and co-host of the Comfort Food podcast--joins host Carter Umhau, LMHC to share the story of how the feeding issues that arose for her newborn daughter inspired a new way of thinking about body trust and the diet industry in America. Virginia and Carter talk body image, parenting, feminism, and what it means to relearn your own “eating instinct.”  

The Eating Instinct: Food Culture, Body Image and Guilt in America: https://www.amazon.com/Eating-Instinct-Culture-Image-America/dp/1250120985/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1548431931&sr=8-1&keywords=the+eating+instinct

Links:

To explore more of the themes Carter and Kara talked about in this episode, we suggest taking a look at these three books:

Mindset by Carol Dweck: https://www.amazon.com/Mindset-Psychology-Carol-S-Dweck/dp/0345472322/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1547780115&sr=1-1&keywords=mindset+carol+dweck

Better by Mistake by Alina Tugend: https://www.amazon.com/Better-Mistake-Unexpected-Benefits-Being/dp/1594487855

The Artist’s Way by Julia Cameron: https://www.amazon.com/Artists-Way-25th-Anniversary/dp/0143129252/ref=sr_1_1_sspa?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1547780198&sr=1-1-spons&keywords=artist%27s+way&psc=1

Have you ever considered that maybe your unprocessed grief could be keeping you from the transformations you’re desiring in your life? Opal Co-Founders Julie Church, RD,CD, CEDRD, Kara Bazzi, LMFT, CEDS and Lexi Giblin, PhD., CEDS join host Carter Umhau, LMHC to explore the necessity of grief and how mainstream American culture often doesn’t hold space for rituals and rights around the grief we all hold. Listen in for Lexi’s story about a recent grief ritual she participated in, and dietitian Julie’s thoughts on why eating with emotion is part of good grief.