What on earth would a podcast about designing human conversations, facilitation, leadership and organizational change have to learn from a coach and an expert on Food and Eating? Quite a lot, as it turns out! One of my favorite design thinking principles is to learn from "alternative worlds" - absorbing how other people and communities are solving similar problems in different contexts.

My guest, Alissa Rumsey, is a registered dietitian, nutrition therapist, certified intuitive eating counselor, and the author of Unapologetic Eating: Make Peace With Food and Transform Your Life.

It's always interesting to learn from reflective practitioners - people willing to think about how they do what they do. Alissa designs many human conversations in her work and life, from her coaching work to her group programs to her book, and the marketing thereof - a book is a conversation, after all. Alissa's whole business is a series of conversations designed to shift the larger conversation about food and dieting.

Food and eating can be fraught topics, but Alissa's approach of connecting with and learning to trust your own body is inclusive, empowering, encouraging and wise. She places dieting in a much larger (and longer) conversation about historical racism and gender dynamics. At the core of Alissa's work is an idea that is of deep interest to me: Interoception.

Interoception

Lately, I've been using this word in my coaching calls a lot, and it's Alissa's work that put it back at the top of my vocabulary. You might have heard the word proprioception: It's how you can touch your fingers and toes with your eyes closed: You know where your body is, physically. Proprioception is sometimes described as almost a sixth sense, the sense of self-movement and body position. It's essential for navigating the world in three dimensions, and survival.

But if proprioception is a sixth sense, there's a seventh: Interoception: One's sense of one's internal state. When we say we feel fine, or feel sad, or angry or hungry, we're interpreting a multitude of internal sensations and summarizing them into a simple word. It's how we know what we need and start on the path of getting what we want in response to those needs.

When we feel sad, what are we feeling that lets us know that we are feeling sad? Where is it in your body? Think about that...and feel that!

When we're hungry, it can be physical hunger (like when I do a 16 hour fast...I know that I'm really hungry at the end!) or "mouth hunger" ...like how it just feels GOOD to eat ALL the popcorn. Or it can be emotional hunger that we soothe through eating.

The challenge is that, unless we are attentive and aware of what's really going on with ourselves, we can't take care of ourselves, we can't give ourselves what we really want and need...and we can't grow. For example, for me, getting a massage is a much better way for me to soothe my emotional hunger...because I can tell you, no amount of popcorn will do it!

In leadership, facilitation, coaching and transformation work, we need to learn to take deep care of ourselves since we are constantly caring for others.

It's only when we give ourselves real nourishment, that we can care for and nourish others.

Like the sign in the airplane says "Put your own oxygen mask on first".

The Work is in You & The Leader you want to be

If you listen back to my episodes with Alisa Cohn (a different spelling and a very different type of coach!) she talks about how "the work is in you"...the idea that as we grow and develop, we have to find new resources in ourselves: ways to be firm and decisive, to be bigger and the CEO others need us to be...while being and staying true to ourselves. As Amy Jen Su (Author of The Leader You Want to Be) said in our conversation about leadership development coaching, "we need to find our own North Star".

I truly believe that Interoception is an absolute key to personal growth and transformation from the inside out.

Also..we all eat and try to diet, to control ourselves...so stop! Eat ALL the popcorn and mac-n-cheese if you want to...and listen to your body when it says you have had enough.

The Body Keeps Score

If you can learn to listen to your inner signals,you'll know when your gut tells you your client is gaslighting you, or if the deck isn't actually right (versus all the changes everyone wants to make!), or when to say what needs to be said.

In my coaching work, I have to hear the voices in my head and trust that sometimes, it's intuition...and sometimes I'm getting ahead of the conversation - that rushing feeling in my stomach could be my excitement to share my insights instead of bringing them out of the person in front of me. It's a dance.

I like to joke: If we don't listen to our intuition, it just might pack up and head off to someplace where it's more appreciated. So, welcome your Interoception, your body wisdom, and give it a place of pride. Honor it!

Alissa's book, Unapologetic Eating could also be called "Unapologetic Living"...if you want more of that in your life and work, check out her book. I've enjoyed it.

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Links from the episode:

Alissa's Website

Unapologetic Eating

Fearing the Black Body

The Beauty Myth