Satiated Podcast

Something I've noticed in food recovery is that certain foods and meals become associated with dieting.  Suddenly, you're afraid or feeling resistance to eating certain vegetables or fruits because these foods have been somatically connected to deprivation and restriction. Your body tenses, your breath gets shallow, you feel tight, and you hear an internal, "NO, don't eat that....

Diets can be a reminder of what no can feel like. The issue occurs that over time a no somatically gets connected with deprivation and restriction. So when you really don’t want to eat something, a no sends your body into a survival response. It can feel like you’re not allowed to say no because now all you feel is tight, tense, and constricted.  And then anti diet culture swoops in and tells you...

Every Saturday, my husband and I listen to a podcast that reads Reddit stories.  For a long time, I have wanted to do something similar but with a focus on food and body image behaviors. I even set up a whole form for people to send in questions, but I got very few responses. So I decided to move forward on this anyway and find my own Reddit stories to read and share my thoughts on how I might sup...

Over the past few years, I've become more interested in neurodiversity. I've had more people come to work with me navigating being on the ADHD or autism spectrums and telling me that intuitive eating didn't work for them. I saw that many of the bodily changes that can occur as a response to trauma can already be happening in someone's brain when in the spectrum of neurodiversit...

Digestion and cravings can all start in your nervous system. Food decisions made from a stressed, sympathetic nervous system state will lead you to specific foods for your survival.  You then struggle to digest those foods, not because there is something “wrong” with the food or your gut, but because your digestion has shut down to prepare you for battle.  You can start to see that every food beha...

Wellness culture teaches you how to NOT feel enough. It is never enough biohacking, protein, red light therapy, organic, sprouted, activated, pure, lectin free food. Feeling like you’re never going to get it “right” does not create wellness. What creates "wellness" are things that cannot be commodified and sold to you as the answer to your fears and worries.  In this week's Satiated...

When the focus is always on finding a root cause, it keeps you looking for the next answer and the next answer and the next answer to your food issues. This can keep you stuck in a survival response. This constant searching sends signals of danger to the body that something is wrong, and it has to keep the sympathetic nervous system turned on (where food behaviors intensify). What if there is no r...

I wanted to approach the transition into a new year differently.  For the past couple of years, I felt like it was more somatically aligned to explore a feeling word for the year rather than resolutions. This feeling word could then be a guiding light throughout the year toward actions or food or environments or hobbies that support you in feeling the way you want to feel.  But, I decided to move...

This holiday week might have been really hard. Surrounded by family, arguments, familial patterns, working on staying connected, trying to enact different patterns with food, and feeling overwhelmed and dysregulated.  And for others, ​this week may have included huge wins. You noticed yourself regulating your nervous system, staying connected, choosing other options besides food to connect with yo...

One of the aspects of food recovery I wished that I had greater guidance around (and had to learn for myself) was discovering how to listen to my body.   Even within different food recovery approaches, there are still all of these rules about what to eat to "prove" recovery or what to do to ensure recovery.  I've seen more confusion over the years about what will or will not lead to...

Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACE) are traumatic events that occur in childhood and affect your sense of safety.  ACEs have been found to be higher in prevalence among those who struggle with food and body image. As the experience of safety diminishes, the likelihood of binge eating increases. This is why you can't shame yourself for your food behaviors. They are not your fault. You’ve been...

The number one question I often get asked in sessions is, "What is the somatic practice I should be doing to calm myself down?" Somatic and nervous system work has been completely misconstrued and misrepresented, and I get why.  If all you're seeing on social media is a list of suggestions on practices you can do to make things better or calm yourself down, it can feel like there is...

We were all taught how to eat and move and exist in our bodies.  The “shoulds” that you learn from your parents, diet/wellness/fitness culture, magazines, media, movies, family and friends can keep your nervous system stuck in a sympathetic response. When you live in chronic stress or survival states, your system prioritizes safety over sensation. That means you may default to habits that feel fam...

​I remember the very slow realization as I started to embody my binges that food was never going to give me what I was looking for.  It felt crushing to face.  I'd been utilizing food as a way to try to help myself feel better, safer, more grounded and I felt so much grief that this strategy was never going to work. Over the years in private practice, I noticed almost every single person I wo...

I'm currently visiting family in Connecticut where I grew up. I was here until I went off to college and then I moved back for about a year before I moved west to go to graduate school.  Connecticut has been a witness to every stage of my food recovery. From the beginnings of starting to choose food to self soothe, my diet culture years, stuck in the binge-restrict cyle, a short stint into or...

In this week's Satiated Podcast episode, I chat with Jay Moon Fields, MA, Coach, and author about:  How to build more self trust The felt sense of self worth Enhancing your decision making skills The embodiment of emotions The process of stepping into self trust: presence, guidance, service, and trust, and how these elements contribute to personal growth and emotional regulation You can also...

In this week's Satiated Podcast episode, I chat with Béatriz Victoria Albina, MA, Somatic Master Coach, and author about:  What emotional outsourcing is How it affects physical and mental health The impact of codependency The journey toward self acceptance Understanding emotions How to approach change through gentle regulation and kitten sized steps You can also read the transcript to this we...

I've been reflecting recently on how much I talk here about the reasons food behaviors like binge eating have nothing to do with the food, but the state you're eating the food in. As I've explored here many times, there are so many somatic, trauma, and nervous system layers to your food patterns. But part of food recovery has to include explorations around food itself.  In this week...

Happy Satiated Saturday!  I find it fascinating to explore the layers and layers of connections between trauma and food behaviors.  Trauma alters the way you experience bodily sensations. A racing heart can feel like panic rather than excitement. An empty stomach might trigger fear rather than curiosity about food.  Over time, the body learns to suppress or disconnect from these cues in an attempt...

Happy Satiated Saturday!  After years and years of navigating food cravings, it was the field of somatics that started to shift my perception of them.  I used to think of cravings as something I had to do battle with and couldn't listen to until I realized that I was defining listening to cravings as abiding by them and that listening to my craving meant I needed to eat the food some part of...

Happy Satiated Saturday!  When a focus on food and nutrition feels like it starts to take over your life, where you're not eating if you can't find what you've been taught are the cleanest, purest foods, and experience high anxiety whenever interacting with foods outside a set list of internally approved foods, you might be navigating orthorexia.  In this week's  episode, I cha...

Happy Satiated Saturday!  Something I've noticed in any body image healing exploration is how private body image concerns are. About 84% of women struggle with body image, yet something so prevalent is often kept hidden.  I wonder what could change if how hard it is to live in a body could be openly discussed and supported, where conversations could look like:  Person 1: How are you today? Pe...

Happy Satiated Saturday!  Fitness culture has made body image recovery even more confusing. I've seen people year after year question if it is alright to want to lose weight, or lift weights, or increase muscle.  What I like to return to is the intention behind these desires and how they feel in your body. Any intention approached from a place of self hate, of disrespecting the body, or pushi...

Happy Satiated Saturday!  At twenty-one, when traveling abroad, I was so nervous about what to eat and eating around others that I did not nourish myself well. I flew home on an 8 hour flight with a fever of 103.  Talking about regulating your nervous system and eating to support your body during travel and vacations is now one of my favorite things to share.  So, I knew in this body image series...

Happy Satiated Saturday!  I'm excited to tell you that today marks a month long focus on the podcast on body image healing.  Every summer, I have noticed an uptick in body image conversation on social media and in my sessions and programs.  So last summer, I started a little podcast tradition of offering a whole series focused and dedicated to supporting you in navigating body image during th...