Physical vs. Emotional Hunger with Stephanie Mara
Welcome back to Here's the Deal. I am your host, Kylie Larson. Today, you are getting a sneak peek into some of the things that we share in our eight-week programs, Lift to Get Lean and the REVIVE program. I had my friend and colleague, Stephanie Mara who is a somatic nutritional counselor come talk to our group specifically about physical and emotional hunger. And the conversation was so enlightening. I asked Stephanie if we could publish this as a podcast. This episode is going to set off a lot of light bulbs for everyone and I hope also normalize those emotional eating episodes that we have. What I love Stephanie said in this episode is that these behaviors, when we have an emotional eating session or episode, I guess, these behaviors are coming into our lives for a reason and it's communication from your body. And so we just need to get curious as to why. Why are these things coming up?
Kylie Larson:
Food is a tool that we use to regulate our nervous system. If you're feeling dysregulated, food is something that is really easy to grab on to that will regulate you in the short term. For a lot of people, this might be the only tool that they have. Stephanie, with her coaching and her clients, she helps them find other tools to help regulate their nervous system. We also go into why do some people not feel hunger cues? Because this is a hurdle that I have to get over as I help women and men start to eat more. I'll hear people say, "Well, I'm just not hungry." She talks about why maybe it hasn't been safe for us to feel hungry. We get that relief at the end of the night when we finally do feel safe and then the wheels come off and we will eat any and everything in sight, and this vicious cycle continues.
Kylie Larson:
As always, I feel like you will end this episode feeling really empowered. If you are interested in working with Stephanie, please, please reach out to her. I mean, macros are one thing, but if you are working through issues with food and it's creating roadblocks in your life, so you feel like you're not living up to your fullest potential, work with someone that can help you navigate this because you don't have to do it alone. Enjoy this episode.
Kylie Larson:
Today, we are going to be talking with my friend and colleague Stephanie Mara Fox, who is a somatic nutritional coach. The reason I wanted to speak with her is because a lot of times people bring up this, I don't even call an issue, but the subject of emotional eating. I struggle with emotional eating. What I wanted to do today in speaking with Stephanie is help us identify what exactly actually is emotional eating and when do I know I need to work with someone on this?
Kylie Larson:
One of my favorite things I ever learned from you, Stephanie, is that we all emotionally eat. That's not necessarily a bad thing, but when is it working against us and then what do we do? Thank you so much for talking to us today.
Stephanie Mara:
Yeah. I think you even identified a really great place to start is this difference between even emotional eating and binge eating because I like to normalize. We all emotionally eat sometimes. What I mean by that is that every eating experience we have is an emotional experience. Oftentimes when we hear the term emotional eating, it's being connected to a negative emotion or an emotion that feels, I don't necessarily want to label it as negative, but potentially more intense to navigate in the body. So things like anxiety, fear, anger, frustration, despair, grief.
Stephanie Mara:
These often are more intense sensations in the body that feel more difficult to flow with. We often connect emotional hunger with or emotional eating, and we'll get into emotional hunger, but emotional eating with these emotions. But actually even if you're feeling calm, calm is an emotion. Even if you're eating in a state of ease or peace or pleasure.
Stephanie Mara:
These are also embodied experiences. That's why we have to start thinking of you know what, every time I eat, an emotion is also present with me. Every eating experience is an emotional eating experience. We have to start to get really curious when we're saying, "I'm doing emotional eating is what does that mean to us?" I'm eating out of what reason. I'm eating because it feels hard to sit with these particular emotions that come up for me. This difference with binge eating is there's certain criteria that usually goes along with binge eating like you're doing in a certain amount of times in the week. It's usually in a short period of time where you're eating a large amount of food.
Stephanie Mara:
The way that my clients describe it for themselves, and you might resonate with this, for anybody who's experienced this is it feels like a wolf takes over like you are not embodied anymore. You are not here anymore. In a embodied way or what's happening in your body is your nervous system is in the sympathetic nervous system where you are not online. I really like to bring in a lot of compassion that when you are in either of these experiences that ultimately what is really happening is you are not really there. We have to take the judgment away and the shame away from those experiences of, "Oh, I should have done better or I should have done different."
Stephanie Mara:
We First need to learn how to show up for yourself and how to regulate yourself when you're starting to feel the urge to emotionally eat or binge eat before you can make a different decision. Ultimately you're in your amygdala, you're in your fear response. You're not in your prefrontal cortex where you can make executive functioning decisions. So how could you possibly make a different choice?
Stephanie Mara:
I love bringing in a lot of compassion into this dialogue because actually this isn't another thing about I'm weak or lack willpower, anything like that. Your nervous system is coming in to protect you for some reason.
Kylie Larson:
That's so interesting. We have a talk called Why Stress and Self-Control. They're related, but they're not friendly. It's just what you were talking about with the parts of the brain. When you're stressed, you're back here and when you're calm, you're up here where you can make these wise loving choices. What I love is just once we start to talk about it, it makes so much sense to where I no longer feel like a failure. Something is clearly off and I can now address it and work with my body.
Stephanie Mara:
I think also just to that point that you're even mentioning is such an important part of this process is after... Let's say you do engage in an emotional eating or binge eating experience, and I like to call it an experience. Take away the label. You are not a binge eater. You are not an emotional eater. This does not define you. This is a behavior that you are engaging in for a really important reason. It's maybe the only thing for who knows how long of your life has been the best decision you can make in a certain moment.
Stephanie Mara:
I think that to your point afterwards, it's a matter of not self-abandoning saying I am going to continue to show up for myself. Even now... Sorry, a little tickle on my throat. Even now, after this experience is over and I'm going to stay connected to myself, and I haven't done anything wrong, I haven't done anything bad. This is happening for a very important reason.
Kylie Larson:
Can I ask a question? Oh, what would it look like if I do self-abandon? Let's say I have this binge-eating experience. This abandoning, what does it look like, if I have this binge eating experience? Because I'm not sure I know what it looks like.
Stephanie Mara:
Yeah. So after potentially an emotional eating or binge-eating experience happens, when I talk about self-abandoning, what I'm really referencing there is a judgment cycle starts. I shouldn't have done that. Why did I do that again. You start judging your sense of character of, "Ugh, I should have done this or that." Or I'm this kind of person because I engaged in this again. It really starts to... It puts your body... It continues to keep your body in the sympathetic nervous system response. And what I mean by that is it keeps your body in a fight or flight response.
Stephanie Mara:
So here you are, you probably came into that experience already feeling dysregulated. Food actually, those behaviors were trying to come in some attempt to regulate you. Oh my gosh, food is so regulating. Just even with the neurotransmitters that get produced in our body because of just eating food, just dopamine and serotonin, and all of these reactions that happen in our body that every time you eat, it feels great. It feels good. It feels regulating. It feels grounding.
Stephanie Mara:
The thing is that only feels that way for the moment. It often doesn't feel that way long-term. We often have to keep eating to continue to use that tool of food to regulate. Because as soon as we stop eating, if we don't know how to self-regulate or bring someone else in to co-regulate, we have to keep eating. We have to keep using that tool. A process of this is also starting to learn to bring more tools into your toolbox.
Stephanie Mara:
I really like to normalize, food always gets to be on your list. You never want to take it away. Because then also as soon as we take it away as an option that you can eat whenever you need to eat for emotional or physical hunger reasons. As soon as we take that away, it's like, don't think of the pink elephant in the room.
Stephanie Mara:
Exactly. All we want to do is, "Well, I'm not supposed to choose food when I'm feeling an emotion." We might continue to distract where actually if we just ate, fill in the blank, food that we could just move on with our life. That self-abandoning is even after you choose the food, even for an emotional hunger reason. It's saying, "Okay, that emotion, it's still there. It's still there waiting to actually be processed and digest and assimilated and released from your body.
Stephanie Mara:
That's why that piece of we have to stay connected and not self-abandon is... After you choose to eat a food, it's getting out a journal. It's reaching out to a significant other. It's taking time to actually say, "Okay, what was present for me?" Now that I'm even grounded enough because I ate the food in a very embodied, calm way to support me in regulating that actually it's, "Oh, okay. Now, I feel calm enough to be with what was coming up for me."
Stephanie Mara:
The self-abandoning piece, it kind of keeps us stuck a little bit in the cycle of I emotionally eat to feel better, but I actually don't allow myself to feel better. I continue to feel actually worse because I judge myself or I shame myself or the actions that I did. I don't feel good. I choose food again to make myself feel better. It keeps us in this perpetual cycle. That's why it's so important that actually a part of breaking that cycle is after you've done any kind of eating experience, it's saying, "Okay, let me check in. What is emotionally present for me? How did that eating experience support me in some way?"
Stephanie Mara:
Really flipping your view of it that actually came in for a reason. Then we break the cycle because you start moving back into the parasympathetic nervous system. You start feeling more relaxed in your body. Then you can start to stay connected, embodied where food might not feel so attractive over time to regulate yourself because you are doing it.
Kylie Larson:
Do you think anyone can do... I don't want to take anyone's power away, but this to me, I feel like you need an outside perspective. You need help to do this. I don't know if I could do that on my own.
Stephanie Mara:
Yeah. That's exactly where I come in with my work as a somatic nutritional counselor is this is exactly what I'm exploring with the people that I work with, is starting to... Sorry, that tickle on my throat is still there. What we're starting to work on together is we are starting to identify what regulates you. It could be your perceptions. It could be beliefs. It could be situations, traumas that happened in your past that your body is actually stuck in a dysregulation because that's what came into protect you saying, "We need to stay hypervigilant because the world is dangerous." We have to make sure that we can protect ourselves. This is exactly what I'm identifying with our clients is starting to learn what does dysregulation feel like in my body? How do I know I'm dysregulated? Then if you are a unique individual.
Stephanie Mara:
It's starting to discover for yourself what regulates me? What co-regulates me? What brings me back into my body into a sense of safety? It is a process and I think that, yes, we need an ally. We need someone to work with to explore these things because we all have blinders. I have blinders like my own stuff sometimes. That's why I also receive my own support in my own life because we need to constantly be looking at ourselves because our reactions are constantly information for where we are at and where we are growing and where we are evolving and we are constantly shifting and changing human beings.
Stephanie Mara:
I think that the piece is giving yourself the opportunity to be an imperfect person, which I think a part of this is exploring potentially inner perfectionists and befriending them and even getting curious about them and who they are inside of you. That in this process you start to see that when you have a reaction happen, it's not that it's a bad thing. A part of this, and I know we talked about this on our Instagram live the other day, is creating that pause and saying, "Oh, I'm having a reaction. Let me pause first before I react and get curious about what this reaction is providing me information about myself.
Stephanie Mara:
How am I perceiving this moment as potentially a threat because it feels familiar from a past experience that I went through. I mean, you see how far down the rabbit hole I can go with this, but we have such a focus that it's about the emotional eating behavior. It's about the binge eating behavior and actually it's really not. It's actually that these behaviors are coming into your life for a reason. We have to start to explore what that reason is to heal.
Stephanie Mara:
We kind of have to flip it around of, I think a lot of the times individuals are focusing so heavily on I have to fix this emotional eating issue. If we actually see that that is communication from your body, I like to see it as if a baby was upset and we took their favorite toy away from them that really self soothes them and we don't put anything in place first. Oh my gosh, how dysregulating and how scary that would be for that little baby.
Stephanie Mara:
It's kind of the same thing that if we focus on taking the emotional eating behavior away from you first without understanding why it's there to begin with, that can actually feel even more dysregulating because you're using it potentially to regulate yourself. We have to first understand and build awareness of why it's there, so you can start cultivating self-compassion and empathy and then change can happen from that place of appreciation and ownership of, "Oh wow, that's really been supporting me for so many different reasons, for such a long time." Then as you learn more tools to regulate yourself, naturally the eating behavior will change instead of coming out of it from a place of force that I have to change this.
Kylie Larson:
I mean that analogy of the baby is perfect because I can imagine someone who has been doing this forever. This is the only coping skill that they have is the only thing that helps regulate them. At least they think so. We take that away, how horrible that would feel. If you take my binky away, I'm going to scream and I'm going to cry forever. Wow.
Stephanie Mara:
Yeah. That's why we have to start to see any patterns of emotional eating or binge eating. They are there trying to support you in some way. They're trying to help you feel safe in your body. We even have to start shifting our perception around them that it's something that is bad that needs to be... I've even said this word before with quotations are fixed. You don't need to fix this. We actually first need to understand it and get curious about it. There's a lot of different ways we can do that. If someone resonates this with this and wants to come work with me, there's a lot of different ways that we can explore this.
Stephanie Mara:
One piece that I want to offer today and is starting to explore the difference between physical and emotional hunger in your body and how do you identify that? Oftentimes it can start there...I just want to first explain from the time we are born, physical and emotional hungers are connected. Those wires get crossed because when you think about it as a baby, when we are being fed whether it was bottle fed or breast fed or whatever the situation was, but when we were being fed, we are being seen, we are being connected with, we are being usually held.
Stephanie Mara:
We feel safe, we feel attuned to. That experience of, "Ooh, food is regulating that starts from the time we are born." I also like to bring in that piece of just, again, compassion that of course these wires get crossed. I think that it's the process of as we grow to teenagers then adults, that if we also potentially weren't in an environment where it felt safe to express our emotions or we were told just to get over it or stop crying or all these ways from our environments growing up, didn't honor and respect that we are emotional human beings and we are allowed to express our emotions and have our emotions that the wires continue to stay crossed.
Stephanie Mara:
I often find that we need to start to... not necessarily that food is ever not going to be a thing that provides you with a sense of safety or attunement. It's allowed to do that in pleasure, but we have to start building into your toolbox more resources that make you feel that way so that when you are in the moment of identifying, "I'm actually feeling an emotional hunger right now," that you have a choice. You have a choice to choose something different.
Stephanie Mara:
First, when I say emotional hunger, what I'm often meaning by that is it's the feeling of emptiness, yet your body does not need food. Usually you can check in on this of, "Okay, when is the last time that I had a meal or a snack? On a scale from one to 10, how hungry do I actually feel right now?" You really get to assess, and we'll go into physical hunger cues in a second because that actually can look very unique depending upon you and your unique body.
Stephanie Mara:
It's starting to just get curious, "Oh, okay, I actually don't feel physically hungry right now." And emotional hunger, the thing about it is that it's very sudden and it's very picky. It's very choosy. You need to feed me this exact thing now. It's very particular even about the food that it's telling you that it needs. Already we can start to get curious of if you're noticing that moment of you have to eat, fill in the blank food, that sense of urgency and pressure, already that's giving you information. This is probably an emotional hunger that's showing up.
Stephanie Mara:
The other pieces is that it continues to tell you that you are hungry. You could try and reason with yourself of just like, "Oh, I'm not hungry right now. We could just go do something else." There will be a part of you that's like, "No, we are legit. You need to feed us something." This has to happen now. I'll get into this piece of why that feels different from physical hunger in a second.
Stephanie Mara:
The other pieces of emotional hunger is also it can show up as different sensations in your body. Usually it can show up as tension in your chest like your heart area. It can feel like your shoulders can start to get tight. It's more of this sense of... Again, it's really connected even to sometimes if we don't feel like it's safe to feel our emotions. It can sometimes even feel like emotional hunger is connected to that fight or flight response.
Stephanie Mara:
The thing about... And I like to use this example of, do you know those childhood toys where it's like it's a circle hole or a square hole or a star hole. You have to fit the right peg into the right hole. Really great for a child to start to learn that. If we start thinking of, okay, so I need the optimal circle tool to fit into the circle hole. Now, you could try and shove that circle cylinder block thing into the star hole, but it's not going to quite fit.
Stephanie Mara:
That's kind of what it's like utilizing food to satiate an emotional hunger. It kind of does it in the short term. You could get that block stuck in there, but it really doesn't fit. It doesn't satisfy your emotional hungers long term. Things that oftentimes really satiate your emotional hungers long term are things that support you in feeling connected, safe, attuned to make you feel purposeful, make you feel connected, appreciated, seen, heard and held.
Stephanie Mara:
Those kind of things are what is going to satisfy your sense of emotional hunger in the long term. Now, physical hunger, it comes on gradually. Instead of that, "Oh, I need to eat right now." I say this with the caveat of if you've waited too long to eat, it will feel similar of like, "Okay, you've now waited five or six or seven hours to feed me and now I'm going to actually scream at you with a sense of urgency that you need to feed me right now." I do want to make that caveat of sometimes physical hunger can feel very urgent if we waited too long.
Stephanie Mara:
Physical hunger often comes on gradually. You might feel the little inklings of it of, "Ooh, I'm starting to feel little like tummy gurgles." Or lightheadedness, or even irritability, that whole hangry experience of like, "Oh, I'm starting to get a little bit upset." This is also a sign of blood sugar starting to go down. We need to eat something to bring that back up to feel stable throughout our day.
Stephanie Mara:
Physical hunger is not picky. I say this also with, now, you could tune into your body and say, "What's the food that would resonate most with my body right now?" But with physical hunger, if you've ever experienced like "I'm so hungry right now," the body is like, "Feed me anything." You can open up the cabinet and be like, "Great. That looks great right now and just go ahead and eat it immediately." Because it's not being choosy or picky in that moment. It's like, "I need more nourishment in this body to keep going and to be able to function optimally." It's not picky.
Stephanie Mara:
That's where you can also differentiate when you start hearing that sense of, "Ooh, this exact thing I need to eat." There's a lot of layers to that which we can explore in my work together of even why we choose this specific... The foods we choose when we're feeling emotional hunger. There's usually a lot of specific reasons around those particular foods as well.
Kylie Larson:
Interesting.
Stephanie Mara:
The other thing about physical hunger is it doesn't need to be satiated immediately. You can wait. It's just like, "Oh, I'm starting to feel a little bit hungry." You might be in a meeting or something or out doing errands and you can have that experience of, "Yeah, I do feel physically hungry right now, but actually I know that I could wait to get home and I can satisfy it when I get home and I can make myself a meal, or I can go somewhere and pick something up." It's often not as that sense of urgency. Again, you are a unique individual. I say these all as guidelines. These are not rules.
Stephanie Mara:
This is just what I have often found. If you struggle with having a safe relationship with hunger, this is very nuanced. It may feel similar as emotional hunger. This is where that's why... Like you said before, working with someone to start to sift through this a little bit, because it's multifaceted of physical hunger can sometimes feel threatening in your body if it didn't feel safe to feel hunger at any point of time in your life.
Kylie Larson:
Well, that is something I would like to explore just a second because in our revive group. One of my biggest hurdles is getting everyone to eat enough because of for so long. They're never hungry. I'm wondering, why is that showing up? Did they not feel safe to feel hungry? Or is it more than that?
Stephanie Mara:
Yeah, I'm so glad you're asking this question. If it has gotten to a place, and we've already talked a little bit about the nervous system, but basically, you have your parasympathetic nervous system, which is your rest and digest relaxation response, and you have your sympathetic nervous system, which is your fight or flight response. We need both. Even sometimes the sympathetic nervous system needs to come online to get into our workouts and feel activated and energized enough. It's not that we can't ever be in the sympathetic nervous system and we're always trying to be in the parasympathetic nervous system.
Stephanie Mara:
It's finding that balance and that flow between the two. What you are addressing is, what I have found is when someone is stuck in a sympathetic nervous system response, and we can basically experience that as you feel a high level of stress throughout your entire day from the moment you wake up in the morning. If your body is constantly feeling like it is running away from a tiger, why would you need to feel hungry?
Stephanie Mara:
You are running away all day long. Then what I often find is maybe there's a moment in the evenings where you finally feel like you can relax and shift into a relaxation response in your body and then you feel starving. That's where people are like, "Oh, why am I doing this emotional eating or binge eating experience over and over and over again in the evenings?"
Stephanie Mara:
It's because you're starving. You've maybe been trying to eat a small breakfast or a small lunch and just trying to get through your day or eating on the go. And then finally, when the body has this opportunity to be like, "We're safe. We're relaxed." I mean, think about it. If you've been running away all day, your body is exhausted and eats a ton of nutrition to replenish to maybe do it all over again tomorrow.
Stephanie Mara:
That sense of, I don't feel hungry right now and that's why I can list the experience of what emotional or physical hunger might be in the body. You might not feel physical hunger of stomach gurgles or lightheadedness or all those things that I listed. You might not feel any of that right now. It's actually really hard to, I even identify that you are feeling physical hunger. Sometimes it can even start there. This is why I actually think that intuitive eating is not... If you were in this space, you cannot intuitively eat. It is not possible right now.
Stephanie Mara:
We first have to actually regulate the body and feeling safe so that you can start feeling and noticing what true physical hunger feels like and then maybe intuitive eating can happen way, way later. I hear from a lot of individuals are like, "Oh yeah, I tried that intuitive eating thing and it didn't work." Yeah, it is not going to work because your body's not ready for that. There's not a communication that is happening or able to happen right now with your body to be able to do that kind of eating.
Stephanie Mara:
Yes, at first, when you're not feeling any kind of physical hunger with those that I work with, it's really important that we start to create more structure and routine to the way that you're eating and I know you teach that in your program of stop skipping breakfast, don't just drink coffee for breakfast because you don't feel hungry. I would even say if you are someone who's like, "But I have to intermittent fast."
Stephanie Mara:
I would even throw that out the window for a period of time because we actually have to start creating a sense of consistency and rhythm in the body of, "I'm going to feed you. I'm going to feed you over and over and over again. I'm going to feed you consistently throughout the day." So that the body starts to feel that sense of, "okay, I can relax now. We actually aren't in danger. Everything's going to be okay." Then physical hunger cues might come on later because you've said, "Buddy, I'm going to feed you. I'm going to keep feeding you. Okay, you're not ready to talk to me yet. I'm going to keep feeding you. You're not sure you're ready for breakfast yet? I'm going to eat breakfast anyway. That starts to shift emotional eating behavior because then we start creating that sense of safety, regulation from eating consistently.
Stephanie Mara:
I often, hear that usually emotional eating experiences happen in the afternoon or the evening and we have to look at what's happening first thing in the day. If you are someone who is, "But shouldn't I listen to my physical hunger cues?" Absolutely. I want you to do that too. But right now with where your body is at that may not be happening. We actually first have to start eating consistently to bring the communication of your body back online to be able to hear and interpret having physical hunger cues.
Stephanie Mara:
Then you can play with your rhythm or also discovering, "Okay, now that I've been eating consistently, you'll start learning things about your body around what time of day it like certain types of foods or even certain ways that things are cooked." You get to start to get into the nitty-gritty of your relationship with food, but has to start there.
Kylie Larson:
I think the big takeaway is we've been offline. You've been offline with your body. We have to recreate that connection and then you can explore other things. Wow, this is fascinating. Is there anything else that you need to talk about in regards to physical versus emotional hunger?
Stephanie Mara:
Yeah, I think that... Oh well, yes. One last piece. Going back to that example of the tools and the circle hole and the circle cylinder and all of that stuff is okay now if... Kind of what I was talking about before of the only things that will satiate emotional hunger long-term are things that support you in feeling safe, heard, held, seen. The only thing that can satisfy physical hunger is food. You can't say, "I'm going to go take a walk," and that's going to satisfy your physical hunger.
Kylie Larson:
Smoke a cigarette.
Stephanie Mara:
Right? That's not going to satisfy your sense of physical hunger. I think that's the last piece there of just the only thing that can satisfy physical hunger is food. That's where we could even start getting curious about how detrimental dieting culture is, "Oh, I need to wait. Oh, I feel hungry. I need to drink a glass of water. Oh, I'm hungry. I should chew some gum." You're hungry. Go eat some food.
Kylie Larson:
When is hunger a bad thing? But forever, I guess.
Stephanie Mara:
Yeah. I think that's also where there is a journey to go on to heal your relationship with hunger as well when you do start identifying that you're feeling it, because there's so many reasons that can also go into trying to control your body shape or trying to feel. I also want to bring in compassion of that, that if you've had experiences in the past where you didn't feel a sense of safety and control in your world makes a lot of sense that, "Oh, the thing that I perceive that I can control is the body."
Stephanie Mara:
Even if there has been a hyper focus on I'm going to control this body shape, that's also coming to your life for a reason as well. We just have to start getting curious about these impulses that we have to deny what we need and why they're coming in to begin with.
Kylie Larson:
It's fascinating. Well, the reason I wanted Stephanie to talk to us today is because we can do so much. We can get you so far with things, but sometimes as you get into this and you're learning more about how to feed your body, and you start paying more attention. You're like, "Oh, I notice I'm doing this." As you can tell, this is really hard to navigate on your own. If something Stephanie said resonated with you today and you're like, "I feel like I need this," please reach out to her. How can people get ahold of you?
Stephanie Mara:
Yeah. First off, my email address is support@stephaniemara.com and that's M-A-R-A. And Stephanie is with a P-H-N-I-E. I know there's so many different ways to spell right all sorts of names. You can also find me on my website, which is stephaniemara.com, and basically you can book a free 20-minute connect call with me on my website so that we can even see if we would be a good fit with working together. You can even talk with me for a little bit about what your uniquely navigating because I can talk very generically on this call today about all of these things, but I really truly believe every person is a unique person and that we have to find the tools, the reasons, the understanding that is unique to your life and your life experiences and the body that you live in.
Stephanie Mara:
We can chat a little bit on that call. I post a lot on social media and so you can also find me on Instagram @_stephaniemara. I'm also on Facebook at Stephanie Mara as well. You can find me in all of those places. If you go to my website, all of my social media of links are at the top as well.
Kylie Larson:
She has an amazing podcast too, the Satiated Podcast, which I absolutely love. I love the name of it because it's like, when was the last time you were actually satisfied and satiated? When have you felt that way? If you haven't, then of course you're living dysregulated. I mean, it's such a blessing when you can find this regulation, and I hope everyone can find that. Somehow, whether it's working with us, with you or anyone else, you deserve it.
Stephanie Mara:
Yeah, absolutely. I think it's becoming, thank goodness, more mainstream. You might already be listening to this and be like, "Oh yeah, I'm hearing people talk all about this regulation thing and nervous system stuff." Yeah, it's becoming a little bit more mainstream right now that actually a lot of the things that we've even identified as issues or problems, or even mental health issues actually can be a sign of body dysregulation. Even learning about what is dysregulation and what does regulation feel like in my unique body, you start to deepen into your relationship with how you react to things.
Stephanie Mara:
It just brings on a sense of choice. I find that a lot of this times, especially with if you're navigating patterns of emotional eating or binge eating behavior, it takes away your sense of choice of just like in the moment you just feel like you have to do it. Even just bringing a sense of choice back online is very healing so that you feel more connected and empowered and calm and relaxed in your body that you do always have a choice, but it takes some time to get there.
Kylie Larson:
Well, you can see why I'm such a fan of Stephanie. She's brilliant. I take something away from every single time we chat and I've got two pages full of notes. Thank you for your time. I really appreciate it. I know at least one person is going to be helped because of this. So thank you, Stephanie.
Stephanie Mara:
Yeah. And anybody who's listening to this, I am very available. Please reach out to me anytime. If you have any questions, you can email me directly and I'm absolutely here for you every step of the way of your own food and body journey.
Kylie Larson:
Awesome. Thank you, Steph.
Kylie Larson:
What a wonderful conversation. I love the way Stephanie shares her message, and I hope you all feel enlightened, inspired, and empowered to just improve your relationship with food. It's relationship that you're going to be in your entire life, and you deserve to have a healthy relationship with it. While overcoming things like emotional eating are not the primary focus of our program, these are things that we shed light on.
Kylie Larson:
We'll teach you the tools. We'll teach you how to properly fuel your body and how to train in a way that supports you, your physiology and your goals, and bring in these amazing speakers that might be the missing tool in your toolbox to help you feel your best and just absolutely thrive through life. For more information on that, check out my website, www.lifttogetleanwithkylie.com. Until next time. Bye-bye. and paste the edited transcription here.