Looking Back and Moving Forward

October 5, 2022

It has been two months since we aired a podcast episode and I am so happy to be back. Today is going to be a little bit of a different episode. I want to talk to you about what happened the last couple of months, where I have been, the things I have been working on behind the scenes, and more about what to expect from the podcast moving forward and working with me.

In this episode, I am also going to answer a burning question I received on my Instagram when I asked what you wanted to hear more about on the podcast.

[01:53] What happened this summer and why I took a break

First of all, I wanted to talk a little bit about what happened this summer and why I actually took a break. My intention actually was not to take a break. If I’m being honest with you, I thought I was just going to take maybe a couple of weeks off after the wedding and the honeymoon and then be back at it right away. However, as we know, that did not happen. So as you may or may not know, I got married this summer. We’ve been together for seven years, known each other for 10 years and it was really awesome. Then we went on their honeymoon always well and good and then got back here and I got pretty sick over the summer. Luckily it wasn’t COVID but I was really feeling off and under the weather for a little bit. I really felt as though I needed to take a couple of weeks off and that actually led it to a couple of months off. But to be honest, it was the best thing that I think happened for me.

[03:46] Our relationship with food and our body

Since I’ve started my practice my goal has been to really help folks change the way that they relate to food and their body. I want us to see food and our bodies as something so different from what we’ve been taught. For many of us, we’ve been taught by diet culture that your food is something that you should be managed, your body is something that should be controlled, and we’re only good if we’re thin and healthy and doing all of the things. For many of us that has caused a lot of issues with our relationship with ourselves, with our body, with food, and with others. When our relationship with food and body is out of whack. Everything is out of whack.

[05:39] Taking a pause this summer

For me, it was really important that I took a pause to process a lot of these things, because I don’t want to show up and not be in love with what I do. I’m really wanting to live a life that’s so full, intentional, really connected, and aligned with myself. I’ve worked so hard with my relationship with food and my body to be so aligned and connected that I want that to transpire in everything that I do in my life. This summer, it just didn’t feel aligned anymore. I just had all of these questions that I needed to process to work through and I felt very much burned out. I needed to take a step back to be able to move forward. So this is where my like two month period of not showing up and not producing as much content came from, it was really a period of time for me to stop and reflect, to really reconnect with my mission to really reconnect with my goal and my purpose.

[10:54] Changes in the podcast

So as we are restarting this podcast, we’re really now focusing on bringing you so much amazing content to really educate and support you in all things food, body, and mind from the entire diet perspective. So I’d love now more than ever to hear from you. I want to hear your questions. I want to hear what your challenges are and what you’re struggling with so I can show up and give you content that is going to help you. This podcast is meant to be so full of value for you and that is my mission with this podcast. You’re gonna keep hearing from me and from guest speakers on all topics relevant to food, body, and mind.

[12:38] How do you stay motivated to heal when you live in diet culture?

Everybody’s dieting around me like how do I choose to continue to do this work when I don’t want to? This is so relevant because I know that a lot of people can relate to this. It is normal to have ups and downs in your process of healing. Never in my years of supporting people with hundreds and hundreds of people now who’ve been through our doors. Never have I seen someone start from the beginning and go to the end in one straight line. Going through the ups and downs of this process is normal, difficult, but normal, and you are strong enough to get through this. So internally what I would say is taking a moment to pause when you find yourself being more pulled toward diet culture.

[15:41] Costs of going back to diets

The truth is that there are so many costs of going back to diets. It costs your relationship with yourself, your relationship with your body, the stress, the obsessive thoughts, the time,the energy, the experiences, and more. When we choose to continue this healing journey we choose to continue to heal our relationship with food and our bodies.

[17:45] Setting up our environment for success

Setting your environment up for success is going to be most helpful. Are there things externally that we can do? Are there people that maybe we need to set boundaries with? Do we need to do a social media detox or cleanse? Do we need to unfollow people and follow more helpful people? Is there something in my environment that keeps coming back that is super triggering that I need to maybe take care of? So externally, we want to make sure that we set our environment to have less friction. If every day like I have something that’s up in my face telling me I should diet, I have the opportunity to change that and to remove that.

[19:24] Celebrate yourself

Remember that even when times are harder, you are still healing and you’re still making the choice not to diet. That’s pretty huge so celebrate yourself and celebrate yourself every step of the way. And remember I will be here along this journey to celebrate with you.