322. Healing Your Relationship With Food Is a Rebellious Act

The world is a lot right now. Globally, personally, often both. And when things are this intense, it can be easy to feel like your relationship with food is a first world problem, or that nothing matters, you're just going to eat. To dismiss the battle as something to deal with later, when things calm down.

But this is exactly when it matters most. We can't all collapse at the same time. If you're hungry, depleted, or consumed by overriding your cravings, you don't have the energy for your own life, let alone for showing up with the values you want to see ripple out into the world. And the conditioning that tells you investing in yourself takes from others, that you should be able to power through, that your needs are too much, is the same conditioning that keeps the cycle going.

In this episode of Truce with Food, I walk through three reasons your food battle matters more in hard times, not less. I cover why you need to be physically nourished to show up for what you care about, why the all-or-nothing thinking that says investing in yourself takes from others is the same conditioning we need to change, and why most weight and food struggles are really about a complicated relationship with power. Healing your relationship with food isn't a distraction from the work of this moment. It's part of it.

5:47 – Why overriding your hunger actually robs you of the rebelliousness and energy needed for your life

11:17 – Why learning to connect how you eat to how your body works is revolutionary

13:52 – The cultural conditioning that makes you believe investing in your own health must come at the expense of your family or work

17:23 – How this zero-sum cultural conditioning trap exists on every level

19:55 – How a client learned the emotional work of tending to her needs, instead of trying to fix issues for her daughter

21:13 – Your food battle as a doorway to examine where you’re still sacrificing yourself to unsustainable norms

24:01 – How that guilty feeling you get for overeating or not working out is often a symptom of internalized capitalist productivity

26:42 – Backlash as a sign of actual progress and how “slow and steady” keeps you in the game

31:41 – How stubborn weight issues are often linked to an unconscious resistance to dominative power, and the need to redefine power as collaborative

36:03 – The yin archetype’s association with food and body issues (including eating disorders)

Mentioned In Healing Your Relationship With Food Is a Rebellious Act

Why Intuitive Functional Medicine Works When Protocols Don’t with Erin Holt

What Your Food Stage Reveals About Why Nothing Has Worked Long Term

Freedom from Cravings course

Truce with Food

Food Stage Finder Assessment

Transcript

Ali Shapiro: Welcome to Truce With Food, the podcast where we stop fighting food and start addressing the deeper story of what you suspect is going on, but can't put your finger on. Because the focus on food is a waste of your precious time, resources and life. When I was able to reverse my chronic health challenges from depression to irritable bowel syndrome to skin problems, it was so relieving, but it was also this dark night of the soul. I was like, how did I figure this out when none of the doctors knew? And again, this was 20 years ago, different time, but still I figured it out, right? With a holistic health certification, right? And it was like, oh my God, no one's in charge of the wheel. No one's in charge. 

I'm your host, Ali Shapiro, an integrated health expert with a 19-year proven track record of client success. I'm a 33-year and counting cancer survivor and creator of the research-based Truce with Food framework that came out of my own personal experience from recovering from cancer and yo-yo dieting. Because you name it, I had tried it. I also have a master's degree from the University of Pennsylvania. I'm affectionately called people's last best resort and a coach's coach, as people come to me, when they've tried everything and nothing's worked long-term. This show is where we quiet the noise so we can go deep to get you the results you deserve. This podcast is for informational purposes only and does not constitute personal, individual or medical advice. Now on to the show. 

So the world is a lot right now, right? We know this globally. And because I have the absolute privilege of being privy to what goes on in my clients' personal lives, I know that personally, most of you are all going through it in one way or the other. It's really quite incredible what everyone is holding right now. Someone, a client of mine, shout out to Deb, recently reflected to me how much I was holding and I got really teary. Sometimes we just need someone to validate that, right? So it's a lot, okay? So, first I want to say, if life is life-ing all over you, this doesn't mean you're doing life wrong, okay? We have this weird belief, in our culture today, in this age of you can bypass your discomfort in any way. We have this weird belief that if you're uncomfortable, you're doing something wrong, that if you're doing it right, it is all easy and fun. And yes, that is what living the dream and success feel like sometimes, but not all the time. So I just want to say no, that is not true. If you are going through it, it's because you are alive, you are engaged with life and life is messy. 

I am recording this on a day after one of my groups. These are clients who are in developmental stage four. So the conversations are rich and deep and they're doing the work that's required to have vitality and wholeness. And I can tell you it's not easy and they are alive. Okay. They're doing the thing. It doesn't always feel good, but it's always worth it. Okay. So I just want to name that, okay? Let's like remove any shame or doubt that if it's hard, we're doing something wrong, right? And another one of my groups, my Truce with Food for Good program participant posted in our classroom and she said, you know, today was a good day. Not in how I used to define a good day. It was good because it was messy, off schedule, out of control and unusual and the food wasn't driving me. I was like, yes. So let's first acknowledge that life is pretty messy. And because of this period of drastic, intense change globally and personally, it's even messier. Okay. So now when things are as intense as they are, both globally out there and personally and or both. It can be really easy to feel like nothing matters, I'm just going to eat. Or nothing matters, my relationship to food and fighting my body and food, this is a first world problem. That's really easy to do, okay? 

So today I want to walk you through how learning how to nourish your body and address your battle with food is actually what's required in this moment of personal and global transition, okay? And how your personal battle with food and all that's going on out here, globally, which we think of as politics, are actually deeply interconnected. In other words, my Truce with Food work is deeply political. And by political, I don't mean Republican, Democrat, Independent, or, you know, Tories, Green Party. A lot of my clients are in Australia or the UK, right, or Europe. I mean political as power. And we'll get more into that, especially related to weight, further on in this episode. Or said another way, why does my relationship to food and my body even matter right now? So I'm going to go through all three levels of why addressing your food battle matters even more in these intense periods, physically, emotionally and on the soul level. 

So let's start with the physical, which is kind of, you know, the easier one to address. And we can file this under what Kimberly Ann Johnson, who is a two-time Truce with Food podcast guest and someone who I deeply respect said, said that I couldn't agree with more. She said, we can't all collapse at the same time. Not those of us who want something better for our lives and the world we're leaving to our children and grandchildren, right? Nourishing ourselves ensures we're resourced to show up consistently with energy and stability. Every day, this feels like coming from a place of being replenished, resourced and a place of generosity. Instead of reacting to everything, feeling like you're never doing enough, resentment and burnout. And it doesn't mean you have to be perfectly replenished resource and always feeling generous. But it means that tends to be the place that we're coming from more times than not. But if you are hungry, if you think you're doing it well, because you're starving and overriding that or you're consumed by overriding your cravings, or you're under eating, which a lot of you all are doing, you're not going to have the energy for your own life, let alone showing up with the values you want to see ripple out into the world. 

Everyone talks a good game about living your values. Guess what? It's hard. It's a lot easier to go with the flow. And at least I can speak to… in America, not the American people, but our American overculture is not very healthy. So it is very difficult to be counterculture. So I'll give you some examples that my Truces with Food participants are navigating. And what I mean by you need energy and capacity and steadiness to show up with your values. So some of my Truces with Food clients and this is actually more than a handful of them, are learning how to show up with their kids in a more inclusive way. A few of my clients' kids have recently gotten neurodivergence diagnoses from ADHD to dyslexia. And these diagnoses have also made them realize that they have this too. This is often what happens. And there's a whole reason why sometimes neurodivergence, especially ADHD, hormonally can show up in midlife, but that's another podcast. But the point of this podcast is they want to support their kids in a way that they weren't supported with what they can now name as their own neurodivergence, because no one had the language back then, or very little few people had the language back then. This isn't blaming anyone. It's just a different cultural time. 

But now we have an opportunity to change things, right? What a difference our world will be in the future if all kids get the learning support they need. This is part of how we create better collective solutions. Parents advocating for their children, right? We're seeing cell phones being banned in schools, because parents are like, enough of this shit, right? Even though parents already have enough to do, it's like, this is not worth it, right? Some of my Truces with Food participants are trying to caretake their aging parents in a way that fills in the gaps for the inadequate elder care systems we have, at least here in the States. And again, I have some clients who are in Canada, Bermuda, there's a lot of holes in those systems as well, right? These are the seeds that get planted that lead to better policy solutions tomorrow. Or maybe you're self-employed like me. We have a lot of practitioners and people who run their own businesses that listen to this. And you're like me and you want to be the change away from an exploitative late stage capitalism economy, right? Guess what? It takes a lot more effort and energy and resources to run a business ethically than not. If you're actually building something that's lasting, sustainable and generative, completely different animal than if you're just trying to race to the bottom, right? 

And Erin Holt and I talked about that on last week's episode. So if you're interested in that, you can check out that and we'll link to that episode in the show notes. In other words, and she was talking about and we were talking about, if you're really offering hope, instead of playing to people's fears, you got to play the long game. Or I was talking to my podcast producer, Stacey, about this episode. And she said her and her friends left so they can fight the government. It's like, yes. Whatever it is, you need to be nourished for how you want to show up. Even if in this season of your life, all you have energy and bandwidth for is your immediate family, right? I get that. I am in a very intense caregiving season for my own family and it's taking all I've got, right? And for right now, that's all I can do. Even though a couple of years ago, even with insomnia and having a newborn in a pandemic, I was able to do Vote Forward and work on getting out the vote, right? But this season is different, right? It's about flexibility. And more than anything, we need more people to get involved, not the same people doing more than their fair share. 

So being the change we want to see in the world isn't as easy as Gandhi's quote appears on the first read, right? Be the change. And by the way, there was a second part to that quote, which is a whole other podcast about be the change so you could ripple it out into the world, right? You have to learn how the change works personally, before you can really understand how it works in different ways and different policy solutions. So Truces with Foodwork is about how do we physically nourish ourselves? How do we connect how we eat to satisfying our hunger, satisfying our craving, having good energy, sleep, right? How do we feel more powerful in our bodies? Now, we're not taught this, as most of us growing up only learn about how food is connected to calories and weight loss. So again, we think we're being good if we override our hunger. We think we're good if we're fighting cravings, not, whew, I am not feeling as powerful as I could. Having only this understanding robs you of so much energy, confidence and rebelliousness, when you can't connect it to feeling good. 

Learning to connect how you eat to how your body works is revolutionary. It makes you feel confident and powerful in your body, as you learn what agency you do have to feel good, right? What is it like that quote, like the way people stay in power is to convince you you have none, right? It also plants the seeds of questioning that there's an authority outside of you who knows the right way, not just to eat, but to live, right? And for those of you who've been listening or following my work for a while, you know that when I was able to reverse my chronic health challenges from depression to irritable bowel syndrome to skin problems, it was so relieving, but it was also this dark night of the soul. I was like, how did I figure this out, when none of the doctors knew? And again, this was 20 years ago, different time. But still, I figured it out, right? With a holistic health certification, right? And it was like, oh my God, no one's in charge of the wheel. No one's in charge. 

Now, because we live in an era of conspiracy theories and everybody wants to knock all experts as if they know nothing, that's not what I'm saying. There's a difference between expertise versus authority. Expertise is, here's what could work and does work for some people and not all the time, versus authority says, here's what works. So this is about learning to nourish ourself, not more restriction. It doesn't mean you can't want to lose weight or change your body composition. And it means you have to connect it to feeling better day to day in your life, feeling more powerful in your day to day life. Okay? And if you're interested in this, my Truce with Food Foundations course, Freedom from Cravings, helps with this, right? Helps you connect how you eat at one meal to how you feel for the next three to five hours and you learn what foods work for you. So that's the physical level of all of this. 

Now, you could listen to this and think, yeah, yeah, that makes sense. Totally get it. But emotionally, I'm just not there, right? And here's how this shows up on the surface, when we're not emotionally on board. I shouldn't need help with this after all I've tried. Some of my clients are like, I'm how many years old? 50 years old? 45? And I still don't know how to eat for my body, or why I'm turning to food. But no one teaches us this, right? The powers that we benefit from us spinning our wheels. Or I'm taking away from my family if I invest in myself. Or this is a big one, it's not that bad, or this is a first world problem, right? Now, sometimes you cannot address your food and body pain. I am not going to be that asshole that says we all have the same 24 hours in a day, right? I'm not going to be the bro hacker that thinks everyone has access to the same resources and time. Kara Swisher, I'm so bad at pronouncing names, least last names. She is a great American journalist and she was interviewing this bro hacker about how systemic forces or what we call privilege influence health. And he's like, hey, even people in poverty can sleep. It's free. And she's like, Uh, no, they can't. Often people in poverty are working two jobs and don't get to sleep as much. Right? Like this guy is so out of touch. But I love her for saying that. And I hate that it's true. 

Okay. Anyways, I'm sharing that because the point is sometimes you don't have the available time, money and capacity to invest in your health and the support you need. I was talking with someone who listens to the podcast about joining the last round of Truce with Food consistency. And whenever I have a discovery call with someone, I do not have an agenda. I don't do sales techniques. I'm just like, you have to want to want to do this. Otherwise, it's not going to be fun for me or you. And she was going through a lot of transitions. She was having one kid graduate from college, another kid going to high school and her job, it was her busy season right now. And I'm like, I don't think now's the time, right? That can happen. And sometimes that I'm taking from my family or first word problems is protective resistance to change, right? This is discernment. And this is what Truce with Food teaches. Because if you're turning to food, chances are you don't know how to hold both your own needs and what's happening in your world and the greater world. Here, it feels like it's either or. Either your needs get met and someone else doesn't get what they need, or you lose so someone else can get their needs met, right? 

In everyday language, it's getting out of being all or nothing, either or, black and white. Right? Often clients come to Truce With Food, because I talk about the work that we do is getting people out of all or nothing. So clients will come and say, I am all or nothing. And it takes them a minute to realize, okay, you're not all or nothing, this is a developmental stage rooted in cultural conditioning. And what is called zero sum, if I get something, someone else loses. Okay? So, and again, if you're interested in developmental stages where you are, which that matches where you are in the change process of your relationship to food, I have a whole podcast on the phases that will link in the show notes. And I have a free assessment that you can take that also link in the show notes. Okay? So, the being all or nothing, it's a stage and it's when we can grow out of where we can hold the “and” instead of the “but”, okay? So that we realize our needs are generative, right? When we have needs that can help other people not take from them, right? But the zero-sum cultural conditioning happens on every level, right? Patriarchy is like, oh, it's like if women are getting ahead, it must be at a cost to men, right? This is why we have this huge far alt-right backlash right now, at least here in the States, because women and minorities were making progress. And in a zero-sum cultural conditioning, it means, oh, you're taking from me instead of, yo, bro, I mean, this is what SSAs are like, bro, no, you're not benefiting from patriarchy either, right? Nobody does, right? Except a small handful of people. But this is the cultural conditioning that makes us not feel like we can get support, right? And so we can rail about the patriarchy out there, but we're doing its replication work. We're continuing when we buy into this zero sum that me taking from other people, or that me taking, investing in myself, getting support is taking from others, is the exact cultural conditioning we need to change, if we're going to get out of this downward cultural spiral, right? 

Zero-sum is also in the social media coaching world, which is not the real coaching world that I'm in, calls it scarcity versus abundance, right? And the reality is that's still all or nothing frame. All is the abundance, nothing is scarcity. But the reality is it's holding the and. There's real scarcity and there's real abundance, okay? And the truth is somewhere in the middle. And so this is the real emotional work. Some people call it mindset work, but I dislike that term, because this is not just cognitive reframing. It's actually the work of challenging your worldview that you tending to your needs takes away from others, or for a lot of my clients, takes away from their work in the world. It's learning how taking time for your health leads to better work, not takes away. Or how tending to yourself as a parent, or as a caregiver, makes you better able to show up for longer, right? And again, Truce with Food work is experiential. When you actually work through this, you start to learn when is it possible that I can tend to myself, right? With caregiving, that's not always true, right? And usually in our blind spots is when it is true, right? When we can fortify ourselves, take care of ourselves or come up with solutions. So it's not all on us, right? So, the emotional work is learning how tending to your needs, instead of trying to rescue and fix everyone, everyone wins, right? 

Okay, I'll give you an example with a Truce with Food consistency client, okay? She found herself eating after her daughter would call her. Her daughter was older, in her 30s. My client was in her 60s. And every time her daughter would call her, her daughter would call with some complaints or challenges and my client would try to give her advice. And then afterwards she would eat. And my client was like, but I care about her. I'm like, yes, for sure. And how are we defining caring, right? And so I said, what do you think your daughter needs? And she's like, oh, I've never asked her. I just assumed she wanted me to solve it and fix it for her. And I said, what if you next time she calls just like ask what she needs, instead of assuming. So she asked her daughter what she needs. And she's like, I just really like you to listen. You often give me advice and I often just don't feel heard. So I just really like if you could listen. And my client was like, oh my God, that's what she needed. I've been doing all this extra work. She had energy afterwards. She felt really good that she could caregive and she didn't eat, because her sense of safety was still intact. She was able to be there for her daughter in a more nourishing way. So this is the work, right? To find that “and”, this is emotional and cognitive work to learn how to hold the and, right? 

And related to our food, how do we hold our needs and that of which we care about at the same time, so we don't turn to food or fall off track with feeling good, right? So this is really important. So when we think, I shouldn't need help with this after all I've tried, it's like, first, I get how frustrating this is. I was in this boat. I know how defeating it feels. And there's this all idea, right, or black and white idea that if we follow a nutrition plan, we ride off into the sunset happy, thin and skipping through fields full of flowers, right? And the credits roll, happily ever after. Your relationship to food is not that simple. There's the other 80% of the question, which is the safety and needs side. So it's very black and white, all or nothing to think about, because you spent so much energy and time on nutrition, you've done it all. And look, I spent 18 years in that place, so I get being in that space. I say this with love. And the tender Truce is food is only 20% about the food, or if I'm taking away from my family if I invest in myself, right, it's either my family or me. Instead of understanding the generative nature of when women invest in themselves, usually everyone benefits. We know this is very true with women who have money, right? Can I just say hail Mackenzie Scott? Shiro Heroin, who is quietly donating billions of dollars to causes of people who are boots on the ground, no real solutions, not people in boardrooms, who want to set up philanthropy so that they can feed their ego. Okay, that's another podcast. 

But this is true across cultures. And again, you can intellectually understand that. But if you accept the invitation that your food battle is offering, you will start to understand how this is showing up in your own life and how you have to navigate it specifically for your life. And again, this is where in Truce with Food Consistency, Truce with Food for Good, which is the program after Truce with Food Consistency. It's where true clients start to realize, again, oh my God, I'm really against the patriarchy out there, but it is alive and well in me, when I think I have to sacrifice myself. Yep. I'm telling you, at least with Truce With Food, changing your relationship to food is a rebellious act. It's opting out of our existing systems that are collapsing, because they're unsustainable. And this dovetails with, it's not that bad. This is a first world problem, right? Doing patriarchy's work by dismissing and minimizing your needs. And capitalism's works by thinking money and having a bunch of stuff means we have it all, that we are the first world, right?

Instead of realizing the cost of prioritizing work above all else, including time for community, cooking, a slower life, right? And the machine keeps going on. So this is the stuff you really have to unpack. It's kind of fun, because it's really freeing, but you got to slow down to do this work. And what's interesting about guilt for needing support is guilt isn't actually an emotion. No, no, no. We feel guilt, when we perceive we're violating a moral code. So it's healthy to feel guilty so that you don't steal, cheat, or harm others, right? But when you feel guilty for having a cookie or overeating, you most deeply feel guilty for not restricting yourself and your hunger, literal and metaphorical. Guilty for not working out, most deeply this is guilt for not always being productive in a capitalist society that says your worth is rooted in more productivity, not rest. I could go on and on, but as you can see, the real work of our time, especially as women and marginalized folks and maybe you're both, your needs matter, your capacity matters, your leadership matters. These are the people who we need to say, I'm putting my hand up and I'm leading in a new way, where the leader doesn't get burned out. And we have to be the change we want to see in the world by advocating that for ourselves and each other. 

I also want to note, I'm not dismissing that policy matters at the government level. That's a whole other podcast, how policy shapes values. And change also happens from the ground up. It's not either or, okay? So if you're like me, I care deeply about social issues and I'm not an activist, right? I can do activism, but my work in the world is what I'm doing with Truce With Food. Doesn't mean I don't call my representatives. Doesn't mean I try to get out the vote. It doesn't mean I do work for the Affordable Care Act. But all of that work comes out of my own experience and what I have to offer, right? It's not either or. So I want to say change happens from the ground up, right? And it's like, again, holding the and. Erin and I talked about this in last week's Truce with Food podcast, how physiology and psychology are in a constant feedback loop, right? Life is about holding the “and” more than being in an all or nothing mindset, right? So you're probably already holding the and somewhere, right? I was just talking with an old friend who... She was posting how she's at the end of her breastfeeding journey and how she's so grateful for it. And it's been really hard, because she works full time, she has two kids and she's about to turn 40, right? Things hit differently at 40. And I wrote to her and I said, it's wonderful. You're so grateful. I get that. And it's also hard. And I said, isn't parenting just about like learning to hold the and, right? You're so grateful for it and there's hard times, right? There's joy in kids growing up and there's grief, right? 

And that's same with caregiving, even with our pets, right? It's like, how can I hold it? That is what maturing is. That's what building capacity is about. And this also includes that Billy Joel was freaking right, turns out we didn't start the fire. The world has always been burning, since the world's been turning. And it doesn't mean that we don't each have our part to build something better from whatever you want to call what's happening out there. If you're on my list, you know I wrote about Artemis II. And Liz Plank called it competency porn. And how refreshing it was to see competent people work really hard and do cool shit. And all those astronauts, the four of them, Gen Xers, right? It's like, oh yeah, midlife. This is when you have the wisdom and character to take on something like this. And yet what they were able to do was say this was a crew effort, right? This was everybody, right? So with Artemis and NASA, to me, it was like such a snapshot of how we've come, right? Not only diversity in the spaceship and those supporting the mission, but when you looked at the back room of NASA, it was like, damn, this is the America that I want to advocate for, that I love. This is the best of America, right? 

And I also want to shout out that we also know that black women put us into space back in the 50s and 60s, right? And I do think it's progress to actually see a black astronaut going up into space, right? Imagery, visuals, they matter deeply, right? Trump knows this. God, right? I'm not saying that guy is smart, but he gets PR. He gets building a narrative. So yes, the world is on fire and it doesn't also mean that the world's on fire can be the latest justification for not getting the support you need, okay? Because it's going to continue to go through cycles of being more on fire or not. I've often found locating myself in a longer history timeline and being like, oh, this tends to be what happens, when we're making real progress, like with women or people of color, right? Or same sex marriage, right? The reason there's the backlash is because we're making progress, right? It doesn't mean nothing matters anymore. It means, oh, there's real progress. Now, how are we going to hold steady? Right? 

So this reduces my anxiety, because I realized slow and steady is enough. Slow and steady is what keeps you in the game, especially because bodies are needy, right? Can't get around that, especially as we age. I was just talking to my group, right? We were talking about aging and sometimes there's acceptance and sometimes being where we are and that maybe it is as good as it's going to be, right? And I was sharing that I still have so much grief over how I used to be able to sleep, right? With no effort at all. I was a champion sleeper until I started going through perimenopause. My sleep issues have gotten a lot better, but I have to do a lot of work. And again, I found a way to enjoy it, but I have to do a lot of work to just be able to sleep at night. Right? There's grief in that, right? Bodies are needy as we age, but it's also worth it. So that's the emotional obstacles rooted in the same cultural conditioning that has created the mess we're in. Einstein said, you can't solve a problem from the same level of consciousness that created it. And this is the same with getting our needs met. And so sometimes you don't have the ability to invest in yourself, time, money, capacity, but sometimes it's protective resistance to change, because of the zero sum thinking underneath right? The level of consciousness that we're all conditioned into, okay? Our personal lives are a fractal of our culture conditioning, until we have a reason to look at how we've internalized unhealthy norms, which Truce with Food teaches you to do. 

And yes, even if you consider yourself a rebel, you cannot outrun culture, because we're social beings. And yes, that even means you too, introverts. And again, Truce with Food is experiential. So if you're not a current program participant, you can be listening to this and saying, this makes so much sense. And when you actually go through the framework, your body and emotions get on board as you challenge your worldview. My client, Karen, was like, Truce with Food, which is TWF, should really be what the… I'm not going to swear in case kids are listening, WTF, right? It's like, LOL, right? It's so mind-bending. It's world bending, when you experience the power of and, okay? It's freeing, it's relieving, and you start to learn to trust in satisfaction, not more discipline. So physically, you need to feel good to show up how you want to show up. Emotionally, you need to unlearn the all or nothing, either or, or zero-sum thinking that makes you not take your needs and wants seriously. Right? Okay. Or said another way, women and marginalized folks, we need to be the change that we want to see in the world by opting out of norms that say we should be sacrificing, be happy with the bare minimum, and be caring about everything, right? We're the ones who have to care about everything. No, we need more people caring, OK? So that's the emotional level. 

Now let's get into the soul level. And to be honest, I wasn't sure I was going to include this, because until you're at stage three or four development, it doesn't hit or resonate as much. You have to live into this awareness. You can't just listen to a podcast to get there. But it might resonate and you might be like, I want to pull that thread. Right. So I was debating, but then a great client example surfaced in my Truce with Food for Good about the soul work related to power. And then my client Gina gave me permission to share. So I follow synchronicities, which is the language of the soul. And this example is around weight loss, but this could also be about health. So Gina took Truce with Food Consistency, which is three months and you have to take that before you can get to Truce with Food for Good. Truce with Food for Good is six months. So Gina's having these realizations six months into working through the Truce with Food framework, which is right on time. 

So, she asked in our group, right, like, I've had these same 20 to 30 pounds I tend to gain and lose over the years, right? She's in Truce with Food and she's losing that weight again. And she said, there's a voice in my head that says, who do you think you are? A lot of what I just do is help my clients organize what's happening. I don't tell them what to do. So she's like, is this about being worthy of losing weight? So she and I worked through this in Truce with Food for Good, because I knew this was and wasn't about her weight, holding the and again. I had a hunch, because I'd been doing this for 19 years. Like most weight stuff, it was about power, right? Because we've been conditioned to believe you'll have more power, when you lose weight. We call it confidence, freedom to wear whatever you want, we’ll look like a success to others. But when you really think about what that feeling is, right? I'll take more chances. I'll do the thing, right? That's true. But underneath it feels like I have more access. I have more power. 

And I know that most of us who struggle with food or women or have marginalized identities have had bad experiences with power, right? With doctors, being bullied, not being believed as women or marginalized identities by the quote, powers that be. So we want this power and yet we resist it. And that's what this, “who do you think you are voice” was really about, not her weight, but it was protecting her from becoming that which she unconsciously didn't want to be, which was more powerful. And this is the work here, the soul work. And that's not because power is inherently bad, but it's how our culture has defined power, which is power over. Dominate unfairly, right? Globally, this is what we feel, when we see war and abuse of power, right? But we do this with our dominant agriculture practices, right? If you don't like factory farming, if you don't approve of excessive toxic pesticides, right, to keep making the land produce at a rate that is unnatural, right? That's power over. Diet culture, dominate your body, override its hunger, its pleasure signals, right? 

So what's interesting, and I could so relate to this, is Gina shared she likes the underdog, right? Me too. She herself grew up with nothing, right? So there's that class conditioning that those of us who grew up middle class and underneath and below, right, tend to feel. And she's an engineer and she talked about how she really advocates for the blue collar workers that she works with, even though she's in management. I would call her a leader, because she's advocating for them. She's already showing a new type of power that collaborates with. But anyway, so this background is like there's real life experiences of abuses with power, right? And the deeper work of our time is for each of us to learn how to redefine power as collaborate, not dominate. Okay? So, again, we started with the physical, but to do that, you have to collaborate with your body to figure out how to feel satisfied and craving free. You have to learn how to collaborate with healthcare practitioners and providers, who listen to your symptoms instead of going to battle or dominate them, right? To collaborate, you need to learn how to soften, listen and receive aha’s and insights, as Gina and I were doing to get to the root of what's happening with this, ”who do you think you are” voice as she loses more weight. And again, it could also be with health, right? It could be with anything. 

This collaboration for us personally and globally involves valuing the feminine or yin archetype. And I like using the word yin, because if you aren't familiar with these terms, people confuse it with gender, right? But it's not rooted in gender or sex, okay? Those are also two different things. Let's call it the yang and the yin. I know a lot of yogis out there who get that. Or if you're in more spiritual circles, masculine and feminine, right? But the soul is rooted in archetypes, it's rooted in polarities. So the yin archetype is about cycles, caregiving, earth and bodies, right? So really addressing stubborn food and weight issues are about valuing what we associate with the yin archetype. You have to actually go on a heroine's journey, okay? And this is what my master's thesis is all about. Food and body issues are about integrating the yin or feminine into your life. And that's where you feel deep satisfaction. And you feel a kind of power that doesn't come from dominating. It comes from creating with life, with your body, right? 

Dr. Marion Woodman, who I just did a year of learning her work more deeply, she herself had anorexia and worked through it using, you know, the yin or depth psychology archetype, soul work. And she really believed, you know and I'm paraphrasing her, but the feminine, we suppress the feminine, but it's going to come in, right? You can restrict, but then you're going to binge, but then it comes in unhealthy ways. But anyways, that's a whole other podcast. But she said the feminine is coming in through the back door with eating disorders. That was what her hunch was. I feel like the feminine is trying to come in the back door with eating disorders or disordered eating. So if you hear those qualities initially that I mentioned at the end, most people feel repulsed initially, because we're conditioned to devalue this, right? You have to learn the value personally so we can offer better solutions politically or embody this for yourself, because your ideas shift when you do, okay? So at a deep level, when it comes to weight loss or health, it's really about redefining power as power with. Power with the people, not over the people. Power with our bodies, not power over our bodies, right? Power with our emotions, not power through our emotions, right? It's about not powering through anymore. It doesn't mean, which paradoxically gives you more power, because we're holding the end. 

And I was saying to Gina, you're already redefining power. As your collaborator, you're truly leading in a new way, when you're getting input from workers, instead of the boardroom knows best, that top-down hierarchy. And who does she think she is if her losing weight doesn't mean she has to become more distanced from what she cares about, but rather it brings her closer, because she's embracing a new kind of power. And that's why really, my clients are the best of humanity. They are the people who... They're already doing this bridging work to a new world. What's it called? The transition team. And now we're just turning up more of what they're doing and having them understand what's happening, so that they can do more of it and feel more powerful and take care of themselves in the process. When you start to realize how to hold the and on the soul level, the third way appears, right? 

We call it option C in Truce with Food. And of course, there's like gray area choices, creative solutions emotionally. But if you take the second program, Truce with Food for Good and again, you have to take Truce with Food Consistency, because you're moving on developmentally, you start to see how this extends just beyond the emotional, but to something deeply soulful, deeply meaningful, right? I'm like, oh, this is deep. I'm like, it's the deepest. But that again is exactly what Truce With Food teaches. I can feel more alive and powerful, when I really get my needs and longings. Like when I pay attention to my needs, pay attention to my longings, these matter. And I can do wonderful, powerful things with all I've learned in my own Truce With Food heroines journey, especially now that I have so much more free time, energy and mental space. And you develop the flexible thinking, which is creative thinking in the process. Food is just the invitation. But that went really deep. I might have scared some of you off. That's okay. That's why we start with two other programs, before we get to that deeper level. But at that point, it's just like you're connecting dots and you're like, yes, yes. You're literally hungry for it. Metaphorically hungry. I'm sorry. You start to understand metaphor a lot more. 

So what can you actually do if you're like, yes, I see why it matters, why I matter, even if I don't feel that as much as I'd like? If you're willing to be curious, is not tending to my needs with my body pain and food discomfort, is that legit? I don't have the bandwidth? That's cool. I've said this in hundreds of podcasts. You don't have to always be working on yourself. In fact, that's a whole other podcast of how constantly trying to optimize for self-growth is a way to get out of what is. Not always, but sometimes. Oh my God, I go on so many tangents. And sometimes it's protective resistance to change, because of this zero-sum thinking that we've been conditioned to believe. Okay. So if you're thinking, all right, I want to take a next step. 

The next step is the quiz. Okay. Take the food stage assessment at trucewithfood.com/find-your-food-stage. Okay. The quiz is the next step, because you need to know what stage you're in of development, or which maps to the stages of change with the way that Truce with Food works, so that you can know your most efficient way forward. I don't want you spinning your wheels. Nobody has extra margin, as the finance world says it, extra capacity these days. I love efficiency and elegance. Take the quiz, find out where you are in your next step. Okay? And don't worry if that soul part kind of scared you, I mean, a lot of my clients are already on a spiritual journey. They're on that path. But even so, most people can't just dive right into the deep end, nor might you want to. But be willing to be curious and take the food stage assessment so you can know where you are in your next step forward. Okay? Well, that was fun for me. I know it's a lot. Take time to slowly digest and metabolize it. And I will connect with you on the next Truce With Food podcast.