328. How to Close the Knowing-Doing Gap with Food

You know you’re not hungry, but there’s still this urgent, buzzy energy around food. You find yourself standing in front of the fridge needing something, even though you can’t say what you’re looking for. Maybe you wait until you’re alone to eat, or decide the diet starts tomorrow. You know what to do, so why can’t you do it?

The problem isn’t that you need more information or haven’t tried hard enough. When that knowing and doing gap shows up, your survivor self is in the room. Its job is to protect you from a change that feels too risky, and food almost works. It soothes you and makes you feel less alone without asking you to risk failure, rejection, criticism, or looking bad.

In this episode of Truce with Food, I’m sharing a masterclass I taught inside my client Diana Feinstein’s community about why eating when you’re not hungry makes so much sense. We talk about why starting habits and stopping habits require different strategies, why the survivor self can’t be coached or white-knuckled into changing, and how growing your healthy adult self helps food become obsolete as a coping strategy. Diana also shares how these patterns showed up in her own life and what changed when she finally understood what was happening underneath the food.

1:42 – How this masterclass supports everyday eaters and the coaches helping them

7:30 – Why health coach Diana Feinstein turned to Ali despite knowing what to do

10:05 – Why what looks like self-sabotage may actually be self-protection

12:27 – How the hidden “why not” can outweigh your reasons for changing

18:33 – Why hearing other people name the same food patterns helped Diana feel less alone

20:28 – Why starting a new habit and stopping an unwanted habit require different strategies

23:50 – Why the knowing and doing gap isn’t a character flaw or personal failure

26:43 – How the survivor self creates resistance to change and why it can’t be coached

31:41 – Why food is such a powerful coping strategy and the deeper need it almost meets

35:26 – How hustling and overworking show up in your patterns with food

42:22 – How growing your healthy adult self helps close the knowing and doing gap

45:29 – The four stages of closing the gap between knowing and doing

51:16 – How compassionate witnessing helped Diana stop fighting her feelings

55:17 – What compassionate witnessing looks like and why it isn’t the same as fixing someone

1:00:08 – How food noise can signal that your survivor self is active

Mentioned In How to Close the Knowing-Doing Gap with Food

MaxPact Health | Instagram | Facebook | LinkedIn

Diana Feinstein on LinkedIn

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

Untangle Your Food Triggers: Catch Yourself Before You Fall Off Track

Get Clients Unstuck and Why Another Tool Isn’t the Answer

Truce Coaching Certification

Find Your Food Stage Quiz

Get Clients Unstuck, Another Tool Isn’t the Answer is a free training for health coaches, nutritional therapy practitioners, fitness instructors, and other change agents. 

Learn why clients fall back into old patterns, where traditional coaching can fall short, and what supports lasting change. 

Available through August 31st at trucewithfood.com/certification.

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. 

If I use my overworking example, which was causing a lot of health problems from insomnia to joint pain to plantar fleshitis to my weight, I had gained weight, all this stuff. It was like, well, I'm used to working hard. That's what I'm just going to do more of. And it was like, oh, actually the answer was I had to slow down and work smart, not hard. But I didn't know that, because working hard had gotten me so much. 

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 onto the show. So today we have a little bit of a different Truce With Food episode. Summer here, you got to mix things up. So my client, Diana, who is a health coach herself, invited me into her community to teach on how to close this knowing and doing gap. And I thought, I need to record this as a podcast so that other people who think they've tried everything and failed, who think they're broken, or who think they've tried everything and know it all, yet can't implement it all, would see that this just isn't true. So we recorded this masterclass with her community. If you want to see the slides, especially if you're a visual learner, there's going to be a link in the show notes to see those slides. 

So, in this episode, I talk about this concept of a survivor self that really feels unsafe to change and why it turns to food especially. Some of us call it self-sabotage, some of us call it falling off, some of us call it falling into old patterns and habits. And in this presentation, I'm speaking to non-coaches mainly, everyday eaters and also coaches. And obviously, as Diana will share, there's both. That's what brought her to me originally. But if you're a health coach, nutritionist, or fitness coach, I want you to pay particular attention to how unconsciously your coaching that you have the best intentions of and with, can actually trigger your client survivor self that comes up as more stuckness, or ghosting, or not following through in your clients, okay? It's not because you're a bad coach. It's not because your clients aren't ready for change, or maybe they're not the right fit, they may be. But this is really because developmental work and what I talk about in today's episode, isn't included in coach training programs. I have no idea why. I'm sure in 15 years it will be. 

But here we are. This is what we've got today. And that doesn't mean you can't learn about it. I go into a lot of coaching and nutrition communities to teach on this topic of getting clients unstuck, okay? And the common reaction I get, because I freaking love coaches, we're so open, is, I had no idea the depth of this. This is going to help my clients so much, just from this training and understanding what's actually happening at the root and underneath. So if after this podcast, you want to learn more about this knowing and doing gap from a practitioner lens, I have a brand new training for you called “Get Clients Unstuck, You Don't Need Another Tool” and how more tools can actually keep our clients more stuck. So there's a link in the show notes to watch that training. It's short, it's only about 30 minutes. You can also access that at trucewithfood.com/certification and you don't need to sign up or anything, you can just watch it on that page. It is only available until August 31st and this is a free sneak peek of my Truce coaching certification, which is also open for registration now through August 31st. It only opens once a year. It is a 10 month program. Okay. This is not a six week you're in and you're out. These are real, this is a real training to uplevel your skills and get your clients results they can't get anywhere else. Give you confidence to go deeper with clients and just really have so much more fun with your coaching. So if you're interested, there's more information on that page of how to learn these skills of getting clients unstuck without more tools and also being mentored by me.

Now, for everybody else, if you're curious about what specific eating triggers cause your survivor self to make you feel out of control about food, there's a new training for you too. There's no registration required. It's called “Untangle Your Food Triggers, Catch Yourself Before You Fall Off Track” and that is also only available until August 31st. And this is a free sneak peek of my Truce with Food consistency program, which starts Tuesday, September 8th and opens for registration here in a couple of days. There's more details where you can check out that masterclass, that free, I'm calling a free training at trucewithfood.com/consistency. And the link will be in the show notes here as well. 

And again, I also want to mention, I said if you're a coach working on your eating, you're going to get a lot out of that consistency training, that untangle your food triggers. As Diana shares in how she introduces me, what first brought her to me was not getting trained. It was her own knowing and doing gap, despite being a food and fitness trainer for more than 10 years. So if you have food challenges yourself as a nutritionist, a fitness coach, or a health coach, know, that is completely normal. I think most of us who got into this, myself included, were trying to figure our own stuff out. And I actually think this makes us so much better practitioners. It's one thing to understand theory. It's another thing to understand the problem from the inside out. So TLDR, two masterclasses, one for coaches, trainers, nutritionists, “Get clients unstuck. You don't need another tool”, you can get that at trucewithfood.com/certification, one for everyday eaters. And if you're a coach too, who's an everyday eater, trying to work on your own stuff, that masterclass is “Untangle your food triggers, catch yourself before you fall off track”. Both are only available for about a month, so through August 31st. And that's when the registration for my Truce Coaching Certification ends and Truce with Food: Consistency ends. 

And again, more details on both programs that you'll be able to find when you go to see those training and masterclasses and you don't even have to register for them. All right, let's get onto the show, because I know you're going to learn a lot. Here we go. 

Diana Feinstein: Ladies and gentlemen, welcome here to MaxPact Health, I am so excited to have all of you guys on board for those of you existing, coming back. I am so, so excited about our special guests today. So, for those of you that don't know me, my name is Diana Feinstein and I am the founder of MaxPact Health. I specialize in one-on-one coaching and building personalized health portfolios, designed to deliver risk-adjusted returns, by identifying high-impact, often overlooked opportunities through biometric data, evidence-based science and infrastructure that builds lasting capacity within the margins of your everyday life. So, let's get started. What if the biggest barrier to your health wasn't knowing what you didn't know? It's that no one ever taught you why knowing isn't enough. As a former Wall Street finance professional turned health coach, I've spent more than a decade helping high-performing professionals improve their health. We have more information than ever, yet we continue to struggle with one of the most important questions in behavior change. Why do smart, disciplined, motivated people still find themselves eating the thing they promised they wouldn't, skipping the workout they planned, or falling back into patterns they genuinely wanted to change? For years, I could explain physiology. I could teach nutrition, exercise and sleep, but I knew there was a layer I wasn't seeing. And that became deeply personal, when I found myself sitting at the dinner table with my son, Max, physically present, but mentally fixated on a seven-day-old chocolate cake sitting in my kitchen. It didn't fit the story I told myself about who I was and I wanted to understand why. That's when I found Ali Shapiro. Her work completely changed the way I understand behavior change. It gave me a framework for understanding the deeper patterns beneath our habits, not through shame or more willpower, but through curiosity, compassionate, evidence-based psychology. The impact was so significant that I trained with Ali and integrated her work into my own coaching. And it has become one of the biggest differentiators and how I help clients change in a way that actually lasts. Today, we're going to be exploring one of the most overlooked topics in health, the gap between knowing and doing. You ever wonder why knowledge doesn't automatically become action, or how to help yourself, or others, create more sustainable change? I promise you this conversation will change the way you think about behavior. 

Ali Shapiro: So before we get into how do we fix this, the academic in me really wants us to make sure that we have an accurate diagnosis of what's actually happening. Because when we are struggling, we often are really unconscious of this invisible force. So on the surface, people sometimes call this knowing and doing gap self-savaging myself. I'm not doing what I know I should. I'm falling back into old patterns. In my community, we call it chuck it, F the eating. Like, the hell with it. I'll start tomorrow, right? Diet starts tomorrow. Or it's this urgent, buzzy, more energy around food. Like, I just can't stop. I know I should, but there's this automatic pilot to the fridge. Or as some of my clients said, it'll be nighttime and I'm just standing in front of the fridge and I need something. I can't tell you what, and I don't even know what I'm looking for, but I eat. And then this is a big one that secret eating and by secret eating, because I have a lot of clients that are like I don't secret eat and then when we talk about it more, they are like, oh my God, that's what I'm doing. And I'm sharing that because it's indicative of a bigger sense of aloneness that we will get to but. Some of my clients said, oh I just thought I was just so excited to be home alone to eat. Diana said that I could share that,  sometimes she felt that when she was networking, or when she was with Max, right, probably feeling alone in parenting in some way. I have clients who are at work events, can't wait to get home and eat. I had a client in my recent Choice of Food group who said, oh, I didn't think that was secret eating. I just remember I'd leave my family and I couldn't wait to get home to be alone. But you're right. I didn't want to eat that way in front of them. So it's what secret eating is. And then nighttime eating. But whatever we want to call it, it boils down to an unstoppable drive to stop eating when you're not hungry. And it's an invisible drive, but we can really feel it. So what's really happening when this drive happens? What ends up happening is that change feels too risky. And that drive, is saying the cost of change feels too big, so in the coaching world and maybe if you're on the instagram and you click on one personal development, or even now you just read it and now you're getting all this coaching material, for whatever reason, we often think of what is your why. Well I want to lose weight to feel healthy, I want to lose weight to feel better in my clothes, I want to live long, I want to age well. All of that stuff is really important but what no one really talks about, because it is invisible, is that there's a why not and I loved how Diana said, eating this… thinking about this chocolate cake conflicted with how I saw myself. When I was struggling with food, I saw myself as smart, disciplined, accomplished. I didn't see myself as failing at this food thing, but I would still judge myself, because I was failing. So what ends up happening is when change feels too risky, we won't do it at the identity level. So we are assuming that the cost of change is greater than the benefits. Because change is risky. We don't talk about that. Whenever we come to coaching or some sort of personal growth, there could be a cost to that. And what our system unconsciously and unconscious, some people call it subconscious, we could call it the iceberg below the tip of the iceberg. That controls now five percent of our behavior. And there's an assumption that the pain of what this change will cost me is greater than what I might gain. And so that's really what our why not is compared to our why. If our why is the gas, the why not is, mhm, I don't know if this is going to pan off. And what we're really afraid of is, I'm going to feel bad. I could look wrong. I could miss out. A lot of clients are like, oh my God, I feel like if I do get the healthy choice, I'm going to miss out on the fun, or miss out on connection, the experience, or we may feel out of control. We all have based on our social conditioning different ideas of what it means to be bad, but often the shortcut, especially with food is, I'm being bad. So that's [inaudible 00:14:09] bad. Okay, so let me show you some examples of this. So especially as we age, your body takes time. It doesn't mean it has to take sometimes as much time as we think if we're in a perfectionist mindset. But body and health take time as we age. The body takes work. And so that, if we are someone who is overfunctioning, really prizes ourselves on our professional accomplishments. It's like, oh, this is going to take time away from work. And working hard, especially at work, has gotten me a lot of success. So at first it's like okay I'm going to take the time, I’m going to do my steps, I'm going to get up before work, I'm going to go after work. And then in the middle of change, which we call the muddle, in Truce With Food, certain risks start to pile up, right, oh there's a big project and oh my God, how am I ever going to make this deadline. So as we start to work less, thoughts like I'm behind, or I just have to push through, I have to do it all arise. One example from a client recently was, you know and she's someone in a leadership role at work, but she was realizing how sedentary she was during the day. And anyone who's worked with Diana, oh my God, we have to get our, our neat in. Right, non-exercise activity thermogenesis. And she was like, I said, well, why don't we just start by, you know, I'm always about meeting people where they are. Like, let's just focus on some momentum and just take some walks as you start to before you get those energy dips, so we can get ahead of them. And what was really hard is she's like, are people going to notice if I'm away from my desk? What if people think I'm not pulling my weight? What if they think I'm lazy? All of this like risk for why she couldn't take some time away from her desk. Another risk for those of us who are careers to pay the bills, it's like I have a mortgage, I have kids and carrots are like twenty dollars right now. So we may not be thinking consciously, but unconsciously, it's like I got to keep pace, I got to be productive, I got to secure my financial security. And then what we think is once work comes down, then I'll get it back on track. But if we are usually over 40 and wise enough at this phase, we know that things never stay calm for long, right? There is just always things are shifting and moving. Another example is, again, about probably 80% of my clients identify as perfectionists. And so on the surface, imperfection with food, right, they think it's just about, oh, if I fall off my plan, or if I overeat one day, or I don't get my workout in for a week. Imperfection makes me feel guilty. I feel like I'm doing the wrong thing. If we've been at this long enough, which again, I had been struggling for 18 years, it's shame, right? We just go into, often diet starts tomorrow. It's just this way of leaving the situation, right, from a nervous system perspective. And we can feel disgust. And then we often eat. That used to be like, why am I doing this again? I'm so disgusted at myself. And then I would eat for quote unquote comfort. And we'll get into actually how that comfort is necessary, maybe not through food, but a certain type of comfort. And when we try to say, oh, it's OK to just do what you can, it's OK to not be perfect. The identity piece there is, but really being extra and perfection have gotten me great results. I have proof that doing perfection and over achieving has gotten me really good things. So at first, it's like, OK, I'm just going to take imperfect action. It's going to feel a little gross. It's going to feel like, ugh. But then you start to fear you're never going to get the results you want. And so then we might say, ugh, I'm feeling the risk escalates. And so then so does the fear, the guilt, the shame and the disgust. And then we say, diet starts tomorrow, which is really a way of saying, I'm waiting on perfect conditions, because I know how to excel on perfect conditions. As things always take us longer than we think, especially as we age, especially for women, once you go through menopause, those hormones were doing a lot more than just about fertility. They were about recovery, about satiation, all of… sleep.  As we don't get those instant perfect results that make us feel safe, because it's working and things take time it says oh I'm never going to get the results I want, without following the plan perfectly, this is taking much longer than it should, this is never going to happen. And that ends up us feeling unsafe and threatens our identity, which is at the level that we're working at. I'm just going to take a quick moment, does anybody have any reactions to that? Diana, do you have any comments?

Diana Feinstein: So I remember when I first started seeing myself like, quote unquote, in the slides that you would present, what was so powerful was actually hearing other people in the community vocalize what I said to myself in my head. And so like when I heard other women and men saying out loud, it was almost like I stopped feeling so alone, right? And like one of the biggest things that, you know, when I first started working with Ali was, you know, I want to be able to talk about this stuff. I called it evolving out loud, right, without shame and without judgment. So for those of you on the call that work with me, you know, one of the things that I lead with is, I pull in all of your biometric data and you send me everything you put in your mouth without shame and without judgment. And that's hard, right? Not shaming yourself and judging yourself. And what we do is so automatic. But then when you, in coaching, we call this a subject-object move. When you actually put it out there and you see it, you can't unsee it. And then you see where your patterns and your consistency are, right? So it's like hearing this on the slide, but then hearing somebody else talk about your experience, it's almost like the shame, you know, begins to melt. So that was, that was really profound moving from the slide to like actual real life coaching. 

Ali Shapiro: Yeah and we'll do some of the subject object move more deeply, what's happening with this why not, in a second, to I think help. Okay, so those are some examples. And what ends up happening is we try to listen to more podcasts, read more books, get more information, but this protection, this knowing and doing gap is very emotional. It's in our heart. It's in our nervous system. It's in our bodies. Okay. So resistance is futile. We can't white knuckle our way through the knowing and doing gap. And it's important to realize that starting habits and stopping habits are two different strategies. Okay. So starting habits are like, all right, I'm going to get 10 minutes in. Right. And I think Diana is so great at this of like, OK, where are the margins of your life? How do we get started on that? And that is so important, right? It gets you like, oh, feeling better, all that kind of stuff. But stopping habits, which is what this knowing and doing gap are, are very different strategies, OK? And when we focus just on the behaviors, should I bring food into the house? Oh, no, now I'm doing body positivity, everything's legal, I'm allowed to have whatever I want. Should I read the menu beforehand? But then once I get there, I get swept up in the moment. Behavior change tips, tricks, and tactics in this gap are pretty exhausting, they're defeating, they make us think we're broken, they make us think nothing will work. But really, we have the wrong strategy. In coaching, we say, when you have a hammer, everything looks like a nail. We're trying to do the starting habits with the stopping habits. And this is when we start to think we're broken. And it's just us. And to Diana's point, we feel more and more alone in this. It's like, no, this is unique to me. In fact, when I started health coach, we weren't even called health coaches at the time. But I was in the era where nobody knew what kale or quinoa was. And I was like, oh, I just have to give people information. I'm the only one that's kind of crazy about food. But then it's about the fourth session. We would start talking about deeper things. And I started to realize I wasn't alone in it. But I really thought I was the only one for 18, 20 years. Right. Until I started talking to other people. So that's part of the shame, when we think we are alone in this. And if you really struggle with secret eating that I talked about earlier, it's a sign that you just feel really different and isolated, usually around food, but also somewhere else in our lives. So all of these like quote unquote failed attempts, we make them about us rather than the wrong approach. And so that's the worst. But… and then the best is wasted energy at best in this gap. But as someone who has a child, has a job, has a husband, right, has family that they take care of, it's like I don't even have energy to waste anymore. So to stop these unwanted food behaviors, whatever we're calling them, we have to address the root emotional protective patterns underneath that cause this gap and that's what we're going to talk about now. So, just to recap, because I know this can be pretty cerebral and abstract, but you aren't actually self sabotaging, you're actually protecting yourself in some way. Okay. And we're going to get more into what that is. We are on the surface worried about the why not or risk of change. Okay. That feels greater. Why are the benefits we may get, often when we are approaching health specifically and food and exercise, we don't want to gain weight and that's all important. But we also have to start to think about… that's what I don't want. We also have to think of, OK, but what do I want? So we're focused on, I don't want to look bad. I don't want to not, or some people say the opposite is, I don't want to look not good. However you kind of think that in your cognition. And then the knowing and doing gap is about protective emotional patterns underneath, not the food behavior. So the food behaviors are actually symptoms of this deeper emotional state that we're going to get to in a second. So why does the knowing and doing gap make sense? Rather than when I have an email series that asks people, if you were to name the knowing and doing gap, what would you name yours? And I get people saying, frustration. I feel defeated with it. I'm so angry at myself. Someone says, I just say, I'm so stupid, like, I know better than this. And all of these are assuming that this is a pathology, that it's a deficit, rather than, why does it make sense? And what I was saying a little bit earlier, but I'll reinforce it here, is that this knowing and doing gap, these emotional patterns, do not live in our brains. They don't live in a powerful coaching reframe. They live in our bodies, which are much slower to change and yet they're the fastest to react. So we have a lived history that that why not is greater than our why. So this isn't magical thinking. This isn't just things that we've come up with ourselves. These are real-life reasons of why we have reasons not to change. And again, if you are someone who's worked a lot and has accomplished a lot from working hard, like I had, it's like, I'm just going to do more of that with food. And if I'm not doing that, I'm not going to get the results I want if I'm imperfect with my food plan. And then, oh my God, then I look bad. I look like I'm failing. I can't have people look like I'm failing. And so then I'm going to go eat, essentially, for comfort. But we have a really good reason of why not to change. And it's at an identity level, so this is something that we talk about in my Truce Coaching Certification and also we touch upon in my Truce With Food work with people I'm working with, who aren't practitioners. And Diana was talking about subject object move, that's what we… a term in developmental psychology that we say like once you can see something, right, once you can see the pattern, then it doesn't have you. You have that and you have choice, right? But until you see it, you just think that you have a food problem, okay? Rather than your system is quite brilliant and it's really looking out for you. So the missing piece of this, the emotional state that we're in, we have to know who's in the room, when that knowing and doing gap is arising. And it could be when you're actually eating, or it could be like, to Diana's example, right, at a networking event. I can't wait to get home and eat… or with my clients, I can't wait to leave work and get home. I felt that way too when I was in a corporate job. I was like, I can't wait to just be by myself and eat. So it's also about the area of life that is making us want to go home and eat, right? A lot of my clients, it's their parenting, right? Or it is a health condition. As someone who I didn't get into, but I had cancer as a teenager, which created a lot of anxiety around my health and a lot of my binging. It's like I have a lived history of a really hard health history, right? And so it's not like we just came up with all of this ourselves. It's living in our system. So this model is called the “Three Selves of Trauma Model” by Professor Franz Rupert. And in this model, we have the healthy self, OK? And the healthy self is us at our bravest. It's what brought you to Diana. It's who my clients, it brings them to me. If you're a coach, it's what brought you to coaching. It's like, I love growing. I love changing. I love evolving, right? It knows it's why. I say, peddle to the metal, baby, let's do this. This is the gas on our change. I'm ready for this. And the good news is it's always present. And if you study indigenous wisdom, right, they call this our whole self. If you have heard of inner family systems and internal family systems, they call this capital S self. As in grad school, I always like to see what theories are saying all the same thing, different language, different context, but essentially an essential truth. So we know that this healthy self is always present. Now, the survivor self. When we are in those places, where we can't wait to get home to eat, or when we are actually doing the eating, okay, the room fills up really fast, now we are with our survivor self. And you know I'm not going to get into this today, but the survivor self's job, just so you know, is to protect our traumatized self. If we have trauma, more people than not, actually have trauma, but the survivor self is there to protect the traumatized self from coming out, okay. So it's like I got to keep the… Got to keep it moving keep it moving, right. And the survivor self is that energy, call itself sabotage, call it night time eating, call it binging, call it emotional eating, but it's the gap. It is there to generate your protective resistance to change. So, I don't know maybe I'm dating myself, I think everyone here remembers ghost, Woopy Goldberg's character, Mae Brown, you know, they went for a reading, Debbie Moore's character goes for a reading and she's like you in danger girl, you know, that is essentially what our survivor self is saying. So we use Diana's networking event that's not until she has language for the survivor self or how am I feeling unsafe? Like, like, I'm here, I chose to be here, what do you mean? But there's something that's there is making Diana feel like I'm alone in this. My clients who can't wait to leave work and get home and eat, right, there's something that is making them at work, or in their life feel unsafe. When I would binge before getting my… in the cancer, we call it scansiety season. I had to have MRIs, because I was at risk for secondary cancers from the chemo and radiation I had as a teenager. So, I would binge on sugar right? When I was waiting to, you know, once I scheduled the appointment until I went for the MRIs to I got the results and it's like I know this is not healthy, but it's like, what if they find something, you don't know and you don't have any proof that this is all going to be okay. Because they thought you were okay when you were 13 and went in for a biopsy, so this survivor self wants you to be hyper vigilant, it wants you to spiral, it is looking out for danger, because its job is to prevent the worst from happening again, okay. And I think a lot of times, again, at least if you're in the instagram personal development feed, it can be like don't believe your thoughts, they're just thoughts, but those thoughts came from a real lived experience, okay. And so that's, we're not working on that level, to me that's just futile. We're looking at the emotional patterns generating the thoughts. So if you've ever struggled with mindset work, this is why. Or you've gotten a little bit far, but not with your most stubborn habits. It's because there's a whole system underneath that's saying, no, no, no, no, no. And here's the kicker. And this is really important for the coaches in the group. The survivor self isn't coachable or able to change. So when we're in this state, this is like I said, we go read more podcasts. We get a new diet book that's come out that, oh, the latest and greatest. And then when you really filter through, it's like, this is kind of the same thing that I've already read. There's a prominent doctor that I used to follow. He was a leader in the functional medicine space. He has like 20 bestselling New York Times bestseller books and they're all the same book, just dressed up with a different pain point and saying the same exact thing. And this is because the survivor self isn't coachable or able to change. So and I'll get to what we're going to do instead, but we try these tips and tricks and behavior changes. And what's important, if you're a coach who's working with people, when your client gets stuck, or falls back into old patterns, or ghosts stop showing up, because their survivor self is worried about disappointing you, or I… fit for me, am I not suitable as a coach, right, we start. having our own hypervigilant and spiraling patterns. And so it's just really helpful to know that, so that you don't get entangled, but also so that then you don't make your clients feel more like they are the problem, right? Which no one intends to do, but we're all human and our survivor self is always trying to look good. So that is the survivor self. Now, here's what's really interesting. So even if you're struggling with other stuff, like when clients come to Truce With Food, they're like, so many other things get better. And I'm like, yeah, because you have learned to take better care of the survivor self. But food itself is such an issue with the survivor self, because food is a top survivor self strategy. So when the survivor self is afraid, it is worried that the worst might happen, or is going to happen, it often, like I said, feels very alone. And so it turns to food and Dr Deborah Mcnamara who's actually a child developmental psychologist, she has this great quote that she says nothing is addictive is something that almost works, food soothes but doesn't satiate our deeper belonging needs. And belonging is where we feel significant that our needs matter, okay, so it's a little bit up from just connection. But what's interesting, and she talks about this in her work, is that food stimulates attachment chemicals. So we turn to food, because feeling alone in our hyper-individualistic culture, we're encouraged to do everything individually. We think going at it alone, you know, I used to think, I'm so independent. And it's like, OK, that's good. And you still need other people. So often, we don't think we really need other people. And one of the top complaints about this work for my clients are like I hate that other people are involved with this, right, like I hate that I have to get other people involved, because they're so used to just doing everything themselves. [inaudible 00:33:13] serotonin in your dopamine. Those are attachment chemicals, okay, someone's nearby. And so that almost works to make us feel like I'm not alone in this, but it doesn't soothe the deeper need is I need someone to help me carry the load here. If we go back to my cancer example, I thought my needs were, I need a clear scan. And I really, I wanted that, but what I needed to not binge on sugar for six weeks was to ask my sister who lived in Philadelphia, well, still is in Philadelphia, but was living in Philadelphia at the time. Hey, will you come to the appointment with me? I know this is like, I'm, you know, I'm 23 now. This happened 10 years ago and I'm still scared. And can you also come with the results with me? She was in law school at the time. It was, I felt like, oh my God, you're so busy already. And she was like, sure. Right. It was like when my parents were calling and saying, how were you? Right. I'm an eldest daughter. Oh, I'm fine. I got this. Oh, you know what? I'm actually really scared. And again, I had great parents. I looked out, but I never felt, it was the 80s, you know, hashtag benign neglect. It wasn't really an emotional time to talk about your feelings, right? So my parents would have listened, but it felt like such a burden to tell them. I'm like, they already had to live through this. They were already worried about me. It didn't cause catastrophe in our family, but our family was stretched thin during my treatments. I don't need to burden them more, but then as I started to open up, the food fell away on its own, but I didn't know I needed that. Instead my survivor self was like you should be over this by now, why do you need help, because I was so afraid of that vulnerability that Diana was talking about. So knowing and doing gap, right, with food almost soothes the survivor self’s fears, temporarily I'm comforted and we use that comfort as a negative. You need comfort, comfort food, right? People often say if you're comfort eating as if it's negative, but it's actually a lifeline, because we have only survived, because of other people. I think of if you've ever watched the Nature Channel and like you see all these animals in a herd and then the one animal is like stranded. I'm like, no, go with your people, like, I'm so afraid for you, right, that is also what our animal body right feels like. And so we can turn to food without having to take any risks to look bad or not good. And so, Diana, I'm just going to ask you for as this practical example, when you think of your networking example, like did you think that there was like a right and a wrong way to network there's a way that I can't show up… 

Diana Feinstein: A hundred percent, a hundred percent. So when I was in the investment banking space, it was this feeling of like, I have to show up a certain way and have to put on the suit and get the bag and the shoes. And just reflecting back, my most authentic self is like the five-year-old version of me that saw Mother Teresa of Calcutta on the television and saying to myself, like, I'm going to be a nun when I grow up, that that is me and my most authentic self. And so, you know, having to shove myself into this, like, you know, square peg in a round hole in this, like, outfit and doing the networking thing, it's like, oh, I actually want to eat, because I don't feel like I belong here. And I think what our culture does is, you know, you go to job, you get the school, you climb the ladder, you get to the boardroom, you do all of the things, but it's never enough, right? And so, you know, I like to call this concept of like off buttons, right? Whether it's scrolling on your phone, you know, for like, you know, nighttime, you know, revenge sleep, or if it's like secret eating or like, you know, shopping on Tik Tok or insert whatever thing to like turn off your mind. It's because it's just by the time the nighttime opens up, it's like you finally get to breathe. But it's like, or let me go down this like, you know, numbing hole, because that feels so much safer than feeling my feelings, right? And so with, you know, with the networking, it was, I didn't know where to put the feelings, so let me just keep pushing harder through like work addiction, or obsessive working out or like, you know, whatever thing to like keep hitting the gas, because pressing the brake was terrifying. I didn't quite have a languaging around it until I finally came into your group and it felt safe enough to like actually bring down the armor. But it takes a level of presence to like have people feel safe enough to say that out loud, where they feel that they're the only one. 

Ali Shapiro: Yeah. I love that you said to like words like get the job, work hard, you know, because one of the emotional patterns, right, is like hustling. And the hustle pattern is just always measuring more, more, more, more, more. So people feel not enough, not because… but it's and we do that with food, right? And this is how it's reflected in the food pattern. If you've ever just been like, I'm just eating this to get through it. Like I'm not even enjoying it anymore. I'm just, so how we're eating is showing these deeper patterns. So it's about the food, but it's not about the food, the perfection pattern, right? Like, well, if I do the plan perfectly, I'm going to get the diet results or the health results that I want. I remember having a client who really struggled with mood disorders. And this was like five years ago and like trying everything to heal the mood disorder naturally. And I just… I remember having a huge breakthrough with her. I was like, what if we can use food to support you? But the goal is not this perfect, happy ending, where all of a sudden your mood disorders are resolved. Like what if we can learn how to support you when you're struggling? And she just softened. It was like no one has ever just said like, how do stop aiming for this maybe improbable goal, right? And she kept feeling like a failure rather than she was doing so much and had made a lot of improvement. But it was like, I'm measuring perfection, because the internet told me my mood disorder is just a gut issue. And don't get me wrong, my own depression cleared up from gut issues, but that worked for me, because my gut was destroyed from chemotherapy. That was not her case. But you can see that like the pressure we put on food is also the pressure we put on in our life. So thank you for sharing, Diana. 

So back to food being a survivor self-strategy. As I often say, nature designed belonging to be served with a side of food. And if you think of some of maybe your most uncomplicated food memories, it was probably involved a relationship that felt like you belonged. I was just being interviewed on a podcast today and the woman was saying, Oh, you know, we grew up without a lot of money and my best food memories were going out to eat on Fridays, because it was like, it was all okay. We had joy. We had fun. Right. And I was like, what was the relationships like, when you were having that much fun with food? And it was easy. And she's like, oh, I love the people. It was with friends and family and laughing. For me, it was my grandma. My grandma was like my second mom. She was really involved in our upbringing. My parents were both city school teachers. My grandma was with us before work, after work, would help out in the summers before the city schools got out, because we were in the burbs. And she used to take me to this restaurant called Eaton Park and she would let me get waffles for dinner with whipped cream. Because, I mean, she was super into nutrition. And she was super into holistic health. She also tried to get my mom to smoke with her. It was a different time. We know a little bit more now. But she was like my person. And I still get emotional, because she's since passed. But it was like that relationship was where I felt like I belong so much and I can bring things to her in ways. And I think all of sometimes our grandparents are different than our actual parents. 

So what did we just cover? A quick recap. We have this why not that is greater than our why for change, when things feel too risky. So if we use Diana's example of networking and again, when we are in the survivor self, we tend to be all or nothing, black or white, either or. So you may be thinking, well, like, I can't just totally be myself in my professional setting. That's not the solution. The solution is, what do I need here, to show up in a way that matters to me? And sometimes it's playing the game, right? But it's also not abandoning yourself and it's finding where things aren't either or. So it's how do we start to feel like we can belong, without risking failure, rejection, criticism, et cetera. We have a lived history, where your why not is greater than your why for change. It's not all in your head. It's all in your heart. And it's why traditional mindset work fails here. And when the knowing and doing gap arises, just know your survivor self is in the room. And food is a top survivor self strategy, because it makes us feel almost not alone. 

And the knowing and doing gap, like Diana said, whether it's with social media and those dopamine hits, whether it's with chocolate and sweets and those really big dopamine serotonin oxytocin hits, it temporarily soothes the survivor self's emotional fears, without having to take any risks to look bad or not good. So now that we know what's actually happening here, how do we close this? First, you need to understand why it makes sense. And that is a relearning over and over again, because it takes a while, right? We can all intellectualize it, but as you start to see it over and over again, you start to just have compassion for yourself. And some of that shame and that guilt can start to melt. Because to really make sustainable change, we can't be coming from a place of fear, shame, guilt, it just… that will get you started, but it's kind of like cheap carbs, you will crash and burn eventually. And what we end up having to do is not like, you remember, I said the survivor self isn't coachable So what we have to do is grow our healthy adult self bigger than our survivor self, so it can take care of the survivor self and making food obsolete. And Diana does a brilliant job of this at working at the capacity, that's her capacity work, right, nervous system, sleep, margins of your life, right, like how do we get you to actually be able to hold what you need to do.

So, you know, again a practical example is Diana's still going to have to network, right, I still have to go to a lot of health… You know, I've gone through health scares and heart diagnoses since all of that. This isn't to say that life magically gets better, but I know how to take care of myself now, so that I'm not turning to food anymore. I know how to show up, so that my healthy adult self is resourced, is supported, knows that this hard time can be worked through. And that's kind of the key is that, you know, I just had… is to realize that imperfection is going to happen. And what the work is, is how do I treat myself, when things aren't going perfectly. So an example is I went through menopause early and the main symptom, this was six years ago, when there wasn't a lot of information about it, believe it or not, was insomnia. And I thought my goal was perfect sleep, which is like laughable to me now, but I was so in the survivor self, because I was working on my own overworking patterns, Diana and I have that in common. And I was like, I'm not sleeping, I'm not productive. And now I have a kid and it's COVID and I don't have childcare and da-da-da-da, right? And it was like spinning out. And I was like, oh, what I have to do, is learn how to take better care of myself, when I don't sleep, rather than expecting perfection. And Diana calls this like, what's the floor that we can do? I was like, wait, the ceiling, the floor? But working on that so that you can maintain momentum, you will get the results you want. It may take you longer, but that's the work, is to… how do I take care of myself, when things are actually hard, imperfect? I feel like I'm behind. I'm disappointed in myself. How do I take care of that self, when I feel like I don't belong? 

So step one of growing our healthy adult self is knowing what stage you're in of closing this knowing and doing gap. And I'm just going to go over very briefly what the four stages are. And if you're curious, I have an assessment that can help you to know where you are. So here's the four stages of closing the knowing and doing gap. And I'd be curious, after I go through all four, if you could put in the chat where you think you are. 

So number one is gathering evidence. And we all start here. I was here in this space for 18 years. So I just want to normalize that. But this is where we're really focused on being good and perfect. I want to get all the, I want to stay in my Weight Watchers points. I want to do Barry Sears' zone diet. I want to do the cabbage soup diet. I did the master cleanse, right? If I do this perfectly, I'm going to get the results. There's no risk of failure here. And this is where we're often looking for the best or perfect plan. And here we have no idea we have a survivor self. We're just like, no, I am who I am. And we just, we identify with how we see ourselves. And here, especially anything that is a vulnerable area, our healthy adult self is smaller than the survivor self in these vulnerable areas like food exercise and whatever we think our weight will change. I remember being in the corporate world and I was actually, I was stationed in Paris working abroad. And I was like, oh my God, what am I doing with my life, once I lose weight, I'll figure it out.  I was traveling all around like, I'm never going to meet a partner once I lose weight that'll happen. It's like I had all this like complexity to work through around my job where was I living, dating, right. It's like but i thought my weight was going to solve all that, because my survivor self was in charge in all those areas, didn't want to risk looking bad. So when we are in this place, in this stage, when this knowing and doing gap arises, we read more books, we listen to more podcasts, we feel overwhelmed by our Instagram feed, right? We don't really have any roots of what's really happening. So we just kind of get blown in the wind by what's going on. And it's all conflicting. And as Diana said, we have more information now than ever. And I was someone who was like, oh, more information is going to help. And I now see where there's so much conflicting information. People are worried about doing the wrong thing that they're in overwhelm. And they're on that break, because I don't want to do the wrong thing. 

Stage two is where, OK. And it's like, we're really breakthrough ready on these knowing and doing gaps. So I want to just point out, this takes a lot of work to get here. You maybe have left diet culture, you realize you actually need to nourish and fuel yourself. You start realizing what Diana has taught you, sleep and nervous system. Oh my God, all of this stuff matters. A lot of my clients have stabilized eating disorders. You're trusting more in fueling and nourishing properly. Maybe you've done therapy, maybe you've done spiritual work, maybe not, but there's a lot that is working and that you've done to get here. And here is where this healthy adult self is working very hard, but yet not feeling much better, so it's still using those emotional protective patterns that we feel like we have to keep up. Diana sometimes calls it the masks, right, like what mask… this is the mask I have to wear to keep up my success. And again in coaching we say when you have a hammer everything looks like a nail, right, if I use my overworking example, which was causing a lot of health problems, from insomnia to joint pain to plantar fleshitis to my weight had… I had gained weight, all this stuff. It was like I'm used to working hard, that's what I'm just going to do more of and it was like, oh actually the answer was, I had to slow down and work smart not hard. But I didn't know that, because working hard had gotten me so much. 

Right here the survivor stuff is still unconscious, yet it's more exhausting and defeating, because now you're trying to keep up all the tips and tricks and everything you read. I often say this is where you start to… and there's a technique, called emotional freedom technique, where whenever you're feeling anxious you tap and you tap on acupuncture points. And again IFT can be a helpful tool, so I'm not saying that it isn't helpful in a certain part of the knowing and doing gap. But we also have to ask why do I have to tap so much, why do I need this ten stack of things that I have to do to feel good and that's that survivor self and those patterns that are burning us out and depleting us. But the good news is here we start to suspect something deeper is going on and that's where Diana was when she found me, but you can't name it. That's what led me to grad school, because I love a rabbit hole. You know, it's like something else has to be going on. I don't have language. I don't know what's going on. I don't know what the patterns are yet. 

So then in stage three, phase stage three of closing the knowing and doing gap, you start to really get that this has little to do with food. At first it's an intellectual leap. It's like, okay, I'm just as Diana, you know, people are like, I'm trusting the process and the group. Like I'm not, I'm not really getting this yet, but I'm trusting the process. And this is where I love this quote from one of my clients, Gina, who was in my Truce With Food: Consistency group. And she said, I finally realized I was never broken. I was just confused. And this is where the healthy adult self gets in shape to better resource the survivor self, okay? So you can start to see what does trigger you. It knows what needs will help soothe those triggers without food, will actually satiate your needs. And while at first it's an act of faith, you start to really believe in the C-plus effort works. OK, that's what we call it in my group, Truce With Food, C-plus. But that's like the imperfect, right? If you can show it with C-plus, focus on momentum, you're going to get there. And you're going to get there in a way that the path will be revealed of what actually works for you, in terms of this emotional work. So you don't want to just follow someone else's plan. The survivor self is consciously conscious. So the coaches in the group, if you've studied change theory, which is a little bit sometimes different than coaching theory, depending on where you've trained. This is consciously conscious, right? At first we're unconsciously unconscious. We don't know what we don't know. And then we're unconsciously conscious where we're, I suspect there's something I don't know. And this is where it's like, Oh, I see. And I know and this is where we can start to slow down the pull towards food and interrupt your knowing and doing gap by getting your needs met, when you're struggling, rather than only being kind to yourself, when you're succeeding. So maybe Diana, I don't know if you want to share now or afterwards, you can talk about what actually needs you had with networking, but also with Max, when you were looking at that cake. 

Diana Feinstein: Yeah. So it was something called compassionate witnessing. And when you, when somebody can hold space for you without shame and without judgment, slowly you can start removing the armor, right? I was, I didn't realize how armored until I stopped being armor and how I just could not sit with my feelings, right? Just sitting for more than 60 seconds was like death to me. And so, you know, it all had its roots of, you know, if I sit here and, you know, be with my son, that means I'm not working. Oh my God, I'm not achieving. Right. If I am sitting here in the networking group and I'm not having all of the outfits and all of the, the way I'm supposed to show up, it's like, Oh my God, like I, it was the like, it was the feeling of like this frenetic energy. Like that was the best way that I could describe it. And I remember the first four months in Ali's program, I'm like, what is this? Like I, and I'm relentless. I'm like, no, I'm just going to keep at it. This woman is smart. She knows what she's doing. And my biggest breakthrough was when I could actually sit down with myself and just let myself cry uncontrollably. And just being able to have a safe space to just break down, to break through, was when everything started clicking. It's like you have to feel your way through the knowing and doing gap. And it takes so much defying to do that. Right. And that's why, you know, my biggest thing here at MaxPact Health, you know, whether it's like virtual or in person, being able to have that safe space to drop the armor, that on the other side of that vulnerability is like your power joint connection. And so that knowing and doing gap really starts with having that compassionate witness. 

Ali Shapiro: And I think that's, for everyone listening, because this might sound scary if you're not used to, you know showing feelings or emotions is it first starts with being compassionate with ourself and asking why does this make sense, that is really like, you can do that, without taking any risks, in terms of telling other people. Right, like Diano knows, I have people in my group like I don't even told my husband I'm doing this, right, like nobody in my life knows about this, right, it's like ok. In Diana's, I love that diana focuses on nervous system, in nervous system language, there's a window of tolerance. We don't want you going to show your vulnerability to everyone, because not everybody will take it well, especially if you have it, there's a lot of nuance in here, right. And when we're in the survivor self, we're in all or nothing, so it's like, I got to…  all over Instagram now, no you do not, like that is not what we're saying here, but you can start that first step of just like why does this make sense. Like, I hope if anything, today you start to understand this makes so much sense. But I love that you said to Diana like the define, because I think, you and I both love efficiency. I hate inefficiency. And I think so much of the thawing comes from us thinking that we've failed and that it's the food. Because when we feel shame, that is a freeze nervous system response. So a lot of, I would say both of our clients are walking around in a functional freeze. So it's like, oh my God, I'm making a lot of action above, but I'm just like frozen underneath. Because for me, I was like, it's just my weight. Everything else I'm confident about. And it's like, no, I wasn't. I didn't even know what I didn't know. 

But just starting to be compassionate with yourself of like, why does this make sense? Like, and you can even ask yourself right now, like when I think back to the last time you did something that you didn't want to be doing, ask yourself why it made sense. You may not get the answer right now. That's OK. The body is a little bit slower. It needs space. Wait for an answer, you know. But if you really start to ask, like, why would it make sense? If you're open, you'll start to get some insights. So but it starts with that. And one thing it starts with, you know, in Diana's point, being that compassionate witness. And I just want to like define it for people a little bit more, is that often, when you go to someone who does love you and care about you, like I used to go to like, I'm so… I'm struggling with my weight. I just can't figure it out. And it's like, my sister would be like, you're fine. We love you, no matter what, my parents are like, you're fine. And it's like, no, but I'm upset about this right and again my sister was not… she was always compassionate. But like people who love you will… if they can't be with their own discomfort they're going to try to fix your discomfort. And it was fascinating. 

We just had to put our dog down. And I was really upset about it. And there were so many different when people were like, how are you doing? And I would just start crying for a couple of weeks. And some people were like, oh, it's OK, it's OK, right, let's move on. And I was like, oh, they can't be with their own discomfort. And then other people were like, oh, that sucks. And I just wanted someone to be like, it sucks. I miss him. I'm going to get emotional now. But it's like that's what compassionate witnessing is, people just giving you space to feel and not trying to rush you through the experience. And sometimes the feelings are anger, right? It's not always tears. But I just want to define that for people, because it's hard to find that in the beginning of… if you don't know to ask for it. Like a fight my husband and I would often get into, back in the day, was like he would always try to come in with a solution. And I was like, I don't need your solutions. I need you to listen. And he's like, oh, I was trying to like fix it for you and I was like nobody can fix this, like, I just… and then it's so it was like it helped our marriage, because all of a sudden and then I stopped trying to fix him, you know, or try to give him solutions. And it's like each person ultimately we have to come to all of this on our own conclusions. So I just want to put that in. 

So then once you can start to understand your needs and see how powerful it is and you start to see, like, I love when clients are like, I can't even explain why this is working, but it's working. I'm like, we're just removing the protective resistance to change. You don't have to do more. This is where less is more. This is, I love Diana's word, you're de-thawing to really be able to soften into what are my needs. And then the last stage is where you really trust and satisfaction, this is where the knowing and doing gap is closed, you're not white knuckling. And you start to realize a lot of the food rules you thought you needed, don't need, doesn't matter food is in the house, out of the house, whatever, it's not about the food here. Your healthy adult self is resourced to care for the survivor self. This is where we have deep self-awareness, okay? And I just, I probably could have said this earlier, but not to introduce a new concept, but the survivor self confuses self-monitoring with self-awareness. The survivor self is like, oh, I got to put on the shoes. I got to put on the bag, right? It's like, oh my God, I look like a bad mom here. Or it's, what are they going to think if I eat like this? What are they going to think when I say this? So many people confuse self-monitoring for self-awareness. Self-awareness is curious. It's calmer. It's so much more neutral than the judgmental self-monitoring. It is not hypervigilant. It is not spiraling. It's just like, hmm, let me think about that. 

At this phase, we don't need to think about it. So again, for the coaches and the audience, this is where you have unconscious competence. You are unconsciously conscious. You just know your needs, you become a more resource person, we call it self-authoring and developmental psych, you have your own back, you start to realize like I realize, like, oh I can only do three clients a day, that's max. Like otherwise, you know, between like creative work podcast producing that is just how I operate now, I don't have to think about it, right. You start to understand and you can almost like into it that's going to wipe me out, right, like, you know, we only do one birthday party a day with my son, right, he's in kindergarten, everyone gets invited to everybody's birthday party, it's like I got one birthday party in me. But that's what ends up happening, when you just don't have to think about it, you're just so self-aware of what your limits are, your needs, what will make you happy. 

The survivor self no longer needs food as a coping strategy, again, it was using it, because its needs weren't getting met. It felt so alone. But now that those needs are getting met, food no longer has that job. And so you can retire it from its job. And then food is just food because the healthy adult self has learned how to take care of the survivor self. So its fears don't cause you to turn to food. And this, again, is, oh, hard stuff is still going to happen. But now I know how to support myself through it. That is what we get to in here, because as I tell my clients, like when you get to this phase, now you're not eating. So there's a lot of emotions that come up, when you are no longer eating. And that's OK. Emotions signal… have certain needs containing in them. And we need to get those needs met, but it takes a minute to figure out how to handle feeling more. 

So recap, the knowing but not doing gap is when we assume the juice isn't worth the squeeze. Cost of change is too great, then the benefits. The knowing and doing gap makes so much sense. And as Diana and I talked about today, like start asking yourself, why does this make sense? That's a great way to bring in compassion for yourself. So you can bring in curiosity, right? We don't get really good strategic, insightful answers when we feel unsafe. We know that physiologically and the physiology translates to the emotional state. There's real risk and potential costs or loss when we change. And the first step in closing this gap is knowing there's a survivor self. And it rarely changes with more information. And know which stage you're in of closing your knowing and doing gap so you're actually doing the right work at the right time. And you can find out your stage at my website, trucewithfood.com/findyourfoodstage. Before I get to like next staying connected, Diana, is there anything you want to add to that stage three and four that I added or does anybody have any questions? 

Diana Feinstein: I just wanted to say a big thank you for changing my life and the impact that the work that I've done on myself, it has rippled in ways that I would never have seen coming for my community. So thank you everybody for showing up on your busy day. I know many of you were so excited for this and I hope you got as much value in this short time here. This work takes time. You need to be patient and it's going to be one of the most liberating things that you could ever invest in. 

Ali Shapiro: Thank you so much, Diana. 

Diana Feinstein: So if anyone has any questions, you know, this is like my OG right here, if anybody has any questions, you know, feel free to come off mute, you know, is, you know, what resonated for you and I would love to hear from you guys. 

Ali Shapiro: Yeah, I'll stop the share. 

Listener 1: I would just like to say thank you so much. Working with Diana has been fantastic. And hearing this information, a lot of it has come from Diana already. And this just brought in a little bit more, perhaps, for myself. A lot of food noise in my head, a lot of that survivor mode. And so this was so helpful, in terms of how to grow my adult self, to take care of that, when I get into that survivor mode, until that survivor mode goes away a little bit more. That was information that's really going to be useful for me. So I just really want to say thank you. 

Ali Shapiro: Yeah and I love that you brought up the food noise, because there's a lot of focus on like how satiation and GLPs and all that stuff help food noise, but I have a lot of clients who are on those, or they aren't really hungry, right. And it's like the food noise comes up and it's like nobody's talking about, your survivor self is active, when food noise, right, it's not about blood sugar, it's not about gut health. It is like I'm in survival mode somehow and I need to figure out what that is. So thank you for that. 

Listener 1: That was great. Thank you so much. 

Ali Shapiro: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. You're in good hands with Diana. 

Diana Feinstein: I know this is a really, you know, sensitive topic. So, you know, what we can do too is, you know, I'll be sending out a recap email, you know, with the recording, you know, along with Ali's assessment, you know, to see where you guys, you know, fall. Ali, you want to give anybody a little recap of like what program you have coming up in mid-August? Yeah. 

Ali Shapiro: Yeah. And I just want to say, Danielle said this was very educational. I wasn't aware of the depth of this. I found it very eye opening and think of this will help me with some of my clients. Yes. And Danielle, this is kind of what Diana and I were talking about coaches. We tend to be, you know, we've gone through some training. We think we're self-aware, but there is so much more to it that once you've got a couple of years of coaching under your belt and you start to see these same patterns. It unlocks things to a whole new level and your coaching becomes so much more fun, because you're getting clients results, they can't get anywhere else. Your clients are happy. You're having more fun, because your survivor self isn't over delivering panicking, you know? So yeah, my programs. 

So Diana started with me in this Truce With Food: Consistency program that starts September 8th. The registration will open next month, but just email me at Ali@AliShapiro and I can put you on the wait list. If you're interested in that, it's a three month program, where we actually go over the four triggers that put you in survival mode, go through those needs. The compassionate witness is one of them. And then there's replenishment, resourcing and significance. And then we go through our big feelings about having needs, because most of my clients have judgments about having needs. So we work through that and then we get into the thinking errors that essentially keep us in all or nothing, black and white, either or thinking. And then we get to how do I really have my own back today? Because when we are younger, we needed caretakers, school systems, cultured medical system to take care of us. And we still need care today, but we have a lot more agency and choice as adults and so we need to upgrade our idea of belonging and so we talk about how to do that. So it's three months group program. I say it's a chance to practice being needy. Which we were like, uh, but it's great. Diana attests. 

Oh, and then in terms of the coaches that are here. I also have my Truce Coaching Certification that's open for registration now, that runs through August 31st. And if you go to trucewithfood.com/consistency, starting tomorrow, I will have a training that goes more into this, from a practitioner lens. And if that resonates, email me and we can see if it's a right fit. And then if you want to find your food stage, where you are right now, so you can do the right work at the right time, you can go to trucewithfood.com/findyourfoodstage. And then I also have the Truce With Food podcast. It's in the top 1% of all podcasts, one of the top emotional eating podcasts. Someone else told me that, I didn't know that. Yay. And it's over one, 1 million plus global downloads. And if you're curious about these four stages, episode 320 will give you you a much deeper dive into it. So yeah. Yeah. Diana does always keep it real. That's why she liked this work. Yeah. And that's why I love her and I'm here. 

Diana Feinstein: Oh my goodness. 

Ali Shapiro: What are we doing  if we're not getting real? 

Diana Feinstein: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It's a safe place. And every container meets different needs. Right. I think of this as like, you know, art or like a really great out of it. It's like the answer is always in the defined terms. So, you know, what is really great art? What is a really great outfit? What is a really great coaching program? And it's always in the eyes of the beholder. And so, what are your specific needs? And then, what is the program, the human, the community, right, that actually meets you where you are, that takes you where you want to be? So, you know, I highly recommend, you know, everybody in my community check out Ali's work. It has been… it's changed my life in like so many different ways and I've been at this for like 10 years, you know, and it to say that it has fundamentally shifted like how I view life is an understatement.