How to Have a Healthy Relationship with Food (and why it matters) with Jaye Houston

What's Aliye cooking this week? 5 quick & delicious high-protein meals!
[Grab the recipes here]

In this episode I chat with mindful eating expert Jaye Houston, who helps her clients break free of emotional eating and ditch the diet mind-set. 

Jaye is a HeartMath practitioner and EFT certified, with a doctorate in Women and Spirituality. Initially a weight loss coach, she realized lasting change requires a holistic approach focused on mind, body, and soul, which she now teaches to individuals and groups, helping them achieve deeper healing and well-being.

If you want to lose weight or just gain a better understanding of your relationship with food, you don’t want to miss this episode! 

Find her on Instagram @soulcenteredeating and book a call on her website at www.soulcenteredeating.com.

In this episode you’ll hear:

• A holistic approach to emotional eating
• “The physical is mental” and what that means
• Three key pillars: self-inquiry, self-awareness, and self-transformation
• The transformative power of food and cooking
• How our background informs our relationship with food
• How we assign meaning to food
• How to honor yourself through food and eating
• How we’re all interconnected
• Mindful eating practices

Links:

• Aliye's cooking videos: Watch now on Youtube
• FREE High-Protein Meals Training

Transcript

Aliye Aydin: All right. So I'm here with Dr. A Houston who is the founder of soul centered eating and soul-centered living. And she helps people get to the root cause of emotional eating and I'm so happy to have her here. We were just chatting about how we got connected. I think it was somewhere in the Internet gods that brought us together. But I'm really happy to have her here to talk about what it is that she does. So, would you mind explaining to people what it is that you help people with?

Soul Centered Eating: Absolutely, but first I want to say Thank you for Inviting me here. I'm really excited. I think it's a really unique connection between the two of us. What do I do? I work with folks…

Aliye Aydin: Yes, I would love people to know.

Soul Centered Eating: who Have been on. Let's say the treadmill of dieting. For a good part of their life. with folks who would like to drop pounds, but have given up who it's just a hopeless cause and I seem to, A great deal with folks who have a great amount of weight to lose because they hit that tipping point. And there's no going back. Unless it's surgery. And I worked with folks who have had surgery and go. Yeah, they cut out my intestines, they cut out. This part of this organ. But they didn't cut out what was between, right? Here's

Aliye Aydin: Right, right? So you're doing something different than it. Sounds like, then typical. Weight Loss,…

Soul Centered Eating: that's

Aliye Aydin: You're coaching people in a different type of way. Can you describe it in a simple way for people? That might not be familiar with a holistic type of weight loss coaching.

Soul Centered Eating: So, the foundation of soul centered eating is the physical is mental. and what that means is that I'll quote Deepak Chopra…

Aliye Aydin: Okay.

Soul Centered Eating: who I dearly love. He says. If you want to know your thoughts of the past, You look at your body today. If you want to know what your body's going to look like in the future, You look at your thoughts today. And that's where I come from. The physical is mental, he's saying, pay attention to stress anxiety messages that you're that you're ignoring. And eating from emotions. We eat.

Aliye Aydin: Yeah.

Soul Centered Eating: I find there's and what I work with folks with is three pillars. One is self inquiry.

Aliye Aydin: Okay.

Soul Centered Eating: For example, the one question I love is, who is sitting on my plate as you're sitting there, eating more food than what you really want to eat. You're eating your heart out about something.

Aliye Aydin: That's a powerful question. Wow.

Soul Centered Eating: I love it. somebody said, then I should charge them rent for sitting on my plate.

Aliye Aydin: There you go. Yeah.

Soul Centered Eating: Go for it. And then the next is self-awareness. The more, we practice self inquiry. The more self-aware we become. And where that leads is to the third pillar of Self-transformation. So what I'm really working with is self-transformation, and in that process, yes. You lose some weight? But it's the mental,…

Aliye Aydin: Also right.

Soul Centered Eating: go back to physical dismantle. It's the mental weights that we lose that allow the body to release. The excess weight because what's being reduced is the emotions. so the more stress we are the tighter, the body becomes It can't drop weight.

Aliye Aydin: Yeah.

Soul Centered Eating: If you're stressed, I mean go figure. It's just like,…

Aliye Aydin: Yeah.

Soul Centered Eating: being in a vice and you're cranking that sucker up and Nothing can drop, It's like people go on. A diet. And they'll say I hit a plateau and I just couldn't drop any more weight and I just gave up no sweetheart. What was happening is you were getting more stressed about, not losing the weight…

Aliye Aydin: Right. Yeah.

Soul Centered Eating: because it's stress coming from the outside.

00:05:00

Soul Centered Eating: The body gets a bad rap, it's just…

Aliye Aydin: Yeah.

Soul Centered Eating: but also part of my work is the spiritual component of it. It's not religion. but For years, I owned. Three Diet Center franchises. And it was a diet. I mean you got to start somewhere and I was so rigid and I mean on that diet you couldn't even have carrots because I had too much sugar.

Aliye Aydin: Right. Right.

Soul Centered Eating: It's so these rigid diet rules. Make us all miserable cranky, you're going on a diet or you're gonna be cranky. And so I sold all of those. And then I went to a national organization.

Aliye Aydin: Yeah.

Soul Centered Eating: Coached for them. And it came Thanksgiving time. And they said, You have to coach these people. They have to eat this food. They love you can kind of guess which one that was and…

Aliye Aydin: All right.

Soul Centered Eating: I said, I can't do that and they said You either do that or there's the door and I said, Thank you very much and I got up and I walked out

Aliye Aydin: Yeah. Yeah.

Soul Centered Eating: That's when I was living in if, Ojai California at all the, beautiful beautiful. it's Spiritual Valley and I'm walking up this hill. And I was doing Thich Nat Hahn's walking meditation. And this. Thought just enveloped me Jay. It's the spiritual perspective. That's missing from this diet stuff. So, I started my own.

Soul Centered Eating: Coached people, I did offer them a diet. And they did lose weight. But I think the most powerful moment of that whole time. was a woman, came in and she said, Jay, I hate to tell you, but we're moving, but I want you to know, Yes, I've lost weight, not all that I wanted to but I have never been happier in my life and I still get tears in my eyes, I can still see her face.

Aliye Aydin: Yeah.

Soul Centered Eating: And I just said, yes.

Aliye Aydin: Yeah.

Soul Centered Eating: So I know from a holistic perspective, mind body soul.

Soul Centered Eating: There's something really powerful to that.

Aliye Aydin: Absolutely. The reason I wanted to have you on is because cooking itself for me has been a really spiritual experience since I Figured out how to do it at age, 15 from the health diagnosis, that is why I started cooking. So I was told you have this health issue, you need to change your diet and so I got really into cooking and it was at that point that I really really realized that connection between Really the act of cooking. But also obviously eating in spirituality and it's ability cooking and its ability to heal us because that's basically as a 15 year…

Soul Centered Eating: 

Aliye Aydin: What I did I was changing my diet because I was told to eat less sodium so I cut out canned.

Aliye Aydin: Soups basically and things that had really high sodium in them and started making them myself and then I realized I really love cooking and off went my career in working with food for a really long time. So I think there's not really any clear delineations necessarily or I guess this is my question for In your experience. How does cooking fit into all that? Because what you're talking about a lot is eating and the people that you work with you ever use cooking as a way to get back reconnected with yourself or is that something that's kind of in a different wheelhouse behind a different doors at a different thing because I'm sitting here going. Wow, I consider cooking a spiritual experience every time and cooking itself is transformational, you're transforming the food.

Aliye Aydin: But I would argue that, at the end of every session of cooking I've transformed into somebody else, whether or not I noticed that or not right whether or not my self-awareness. Myself inquiry has been strong but I've been doing this for 30 years now, right? And so I guess that's my question to you is. With cooking and this kind of spiritual experience and helping people heal eating, is that an essential heal with eating? Is that an essential part of it or not necessarily or

Soul Centered Eating: I can answer you in two ways.

Aliye Aydin: Please.

Soul Centered Eating: I don't really talk a lot about food with my clients. We talk about it.

Aliye Aydin: 

00:10:00

Soul Centered Eating: But not that much or we might get excited at a moment. somebody might say, I could such and such and I go. what was that like or something like that. I will.

Aliye Aydin: Yeah.

Soul Centered Eating: Kind of point to.

Soul Centered Eating: being a kid and Mike's starting to cook. I was thinking about them.

Soul Centered Eating: Only cook three things when I was a Cinnamon Toast. Yes.

Aliye Aydin: Let's hear it. yes, I loved cinema toast.

Soul Centered Eating: Baked potatoes. And I lived in Texas as a kid and there was no microwave. You turn the oven on to cook a baked potato.

Aliye Aydin: Right.

Soul Centered Eating: My mom was at work or she would have yelled at me for turning the oven on.

Soul Centered Eating: Look at all the carbs and potato soup. so, in talking about the transformation,

Soul Centered Eating: I remember with the cinnamon toast and the baked potato, I get to eat what I want to eat and nobody's gonna make me. I was skinny kid. but I ate what I wanted to eat. But I also ate what I wanted to eat when I went to my grandfather's grocery store because he let me eat candy and ice cream and anything I wanted. But the emotional part of food. Came for me. When I was 14.

Aliye Aydin: Okay.

Soul Centered Eating: I can still see myself. Standing there. Making potato soup for my dad who was in bed ill. He had been to the doctor that day and…

Aliye Aydin: Right.

Soul Centered Eating: they thought, he's got a bug or he's got a flu or he's got something or another. So I went in and started making this potato soup

Soul Centered Eating: Lo and behold my mom came home from work. The next thing I know and ambulance is at the front door. They're carrying my dad On a stretcher and…

Aliye Aydin: .

Soul Centered Eating: he died four days later.

Aliye Aydin: my gosh.

Soul Centered Eating: I never made potato soup again. and so,…

Aliye Aydin: No joke.

Soul Centered Eating: when I think about, That and I was a thin kid that really started. My emotional eating. And so, what I'm coupling this with the physical is mental, is the grief that I went through with him dying like that. I had been told I guess when I was nine years old they said he could die within three years or so. So I had lived with knowing he could die. but at the same time,

Soul Centered Eating: To actually be in the throes. I was this whole another thing. so, I started

Aliye Aydin: Absolutely.

Soul Centered Eating: I started. Eating. And I didn't Remember those pillsburys biscuit rolls with it?

Aliye Aydin: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Soul Centered Eating: Cinnamon and the icing on top. But I can plow through a can of those, Yes, my mom would have one and my cousin would come over here eating to, and I would end up eating the rest of that can. so, I think.

Aliye Aydin: Right.

Soul Centered Eating: When it comes to, Cooking for me. I don't make it a big federal case out of it. Yet there was a time in my life when I was married. I made my own bread for two years that was before bread makers and…

Aliye Aydin: This is, yeah.

Soul Centered Eating: And I loved cooking. I had all the big holidays and everything. and my point and going through this whole kind of Quick process is to say what I have learned of that. Is that? We assign meaning to food.

Aliye Aydin: That is such a perfect segue into my next question that it's so powerful.

Soul Centered Eating: Good. Yeah.

Aliye Aydin: Because what I was going to ask. So. I'm in the last couple years I've really started with the protein center eating for my age and everything it's like eat more protein. I'm like okay and I feel way better than I ever have. But then I think a lot about and I've never been a person to diet. I don't have a scale all that stuff. I'm really wary of falling into a certain mindset, right? but…

Soul Centered Eating: Totally.

Aliye Aydin: then I wonder My newest offering is about centered, eating high protein eating from a cooking perspective, right? Because my thing is the cooking. But I'm wondering, is there a healthy mindset way to adopt a particular diet? You're like,

00:15:00

Aliye Aydin: I want to eat high protein, but That doesn't mean demonizing all these things. It just means I'm eating high protein and that's what I'm doing. This is a really selfish question, How do you explain that to people or if people coming from a mindset of Low carbs are bad then and I'm like, that's not what I'm saying, eating high protein for these very particular reasons. You want to control your blood sugar? Maybe you want to lose some weight or you just feel better. Or that at a certain age, you're trying to build muscle and, that having more protein in your diet will help you with that type of thing. So, what's a healthy mindset way to Follow a particular diet, that's not assigning, meaning to food, like you said, Yeah.

Soul Centered Eating: there are no good food bad foods. They're just food.

Aliye Aydin: Right. Right. It's just food.

Soul Centered Eating: It's just I think we make a federal case out of food.

Aliye Aydin: Yeah, exactly.

Soul Centered Eating: I mean, I get tickled with when I talked to somebody that's a real foodie. You…

Aliye Aydin: Right. Right. Yeah.

Soul Centered Eating: And I have family members that are real foodies. And I'm going, my God, and I just kind of sit there and watch the movie. It's the movie, right?

Aliye Aydin: Right. Absolutely, absolutely. Yeah.

Soul Centered Eating: That's their food Mood and…

Aliye Aydin: Yeah.

Soul Centered Eating: movie. Yeah. yeah, so I think

Soul Centered Eating: I think. Okay, so a lot of what I talk about is body shaming.

Aliye Aydin: Okay, okay.

Soul Centered Eating: I think we can food chain people, too. I mean. So sometimes people are uncomfortable eating around me. But I'm not assigning meaning to what they're doing. It's what people eat is. None of my business. Because I think that that's part of what drives emotional eating.

Aliye Aydin: This is, Absolutely. And it's really interesting, this new offering that I have for these high Dinners. It's the way I've been eating for a long time. Like I said, a couple years, but I've been really nervous to put it out there. what are people gonna? I'm assigned so much meaning to it. It's so funny. And then finally I was like, This could actually help there's people out there that feel like me that we'll have the same benefits that I have.

Aliye Aydin: I'm just going to do it and not worry about. she's eating this or she's eating that, or there's so many things people can say about it, But

Soul Centered Eating: I think we all go through food phases, right? And so I'm a vegetarian.

Aliye Aydin: And absolutely. Right.

Soul Centered Eating: I can't eat anything dairy.

Soul Centered Eating: I am a vegetarian and I eat gluten-free.

Aliye Aydin: Right.

Soul Centered Eating: Some people just think that's a pain in the butt. I don't care.

Aliye Aydin: Exactly.

Soul Centered Eating: That's where I'll come back to the statement of the meaning that we assign to food. this shouldn't.

Aliye Aydin: Yeah. Absolutely.

Soul Centered Eating: should that I could have said, you should have some vegetables with that protein. because I think when it comes down to eating,

Aliye Aydin: Right.

Soul Centered Eating: Yes, the physical is mental. so, When I eat, What does that feel like in my body? What does my stomach feel like after I finish eating? I was thinking about the holidays are coming and Look at all the meaning that we assigned to holiday on Halloween, you've got to have this Thanksgiving. I'm only going to have this once a year, Then I Get that make that stuffing and stuff myself. and…

00:20:00

Aliye Aydin: Right.

Soul Centered Eating: Christmas and then New Years. And then it's like, this night in shining, white armor supposed to come rescue me on January 1.

Aliye Aydin: Okay. Totally. Yeah.

Soul Centered Eating: So, I think If statement that I absolutely love that I use a lot is, take care of the vehicle that carries your soul. It again.

Aliye Aydin: Mmm.

Soul Centered Eating: Take Of the vehicle that carries your soul.

Soul Centered Eating: My car takes unleaded. I'm not going to put diesel in it.

Aliye Aydin: Right. Right.

Soul Centered Eating: So, when we know the vehicle when we

Soul Centered Eating: then we don't put fuel in it.

Soul Centered Eating: That. Keeps it from running smoothly.

Aliye Aydin: So, you're talking about Honoring that you need. And I don't think all of us are necessarily aware of that, but it seems like that's kind of the beginning of the healthy mindset for me. That's what I come back to if I'm like. It's usually because I'm feeling crappy. I'm like, Why am I feeling crappy? What did I eat today? yeah, that was a lot of not protein. That was no wonder I'm feeling light-headed. I'm hungry all the time. I know the symptoms and I make it better decision. The next time I eat I don't sit there and beat myself up over and tell myself how terrible I am for blah blah blah I just go That's why. Okay, let's get next meal. Let's try to get some protein in there. So what you're saying, it's really an honoring.

Aliye Aydin: And it has to be a recognition and you have to have that awareness, like you were talking about that self-awareness right to be able to even know what makes you feel. Not physically good, right?

Soul Centered Eating: Yeah.

Soul Centered Eating: I think we ignore ourselves in our bodies at our own peril.

Aliye Aydin: Mm-hmm

Soul Centered Eating: Going back to emotional eating. We are ignoring

Soul Centered Eating: ourselves.

Soul Centered Eating: because, The emotions get so far out there. That. Then we get sidetracked on something else. To where the whole thing is just gone. And I'm starting in a newsletter this month and I was writing it yesterday and I just said so you find yourself standing in front of the refrigerator or the freezer? Ben and Jerry's are not your therapist.

Aliye Aydin: Okay. Yeah.

Soul Centered Eating: but we turn to that food for Out of fear stress anxiety.

Soul Centered Eating: And I tell my classes, this is not easy. Up. what I'm talking about is

Soul Centered Eating: Is really?

Soul Centered Eating: Who was it? Is it Emerson? That said, Talked about the Allowing the imprisoned splendor to emerge from you.

Aliye Aydin: I want you.

Soul Centered Eating: This gorgeous beautiful soul that you are. That's been buried in food. Just buried.

Soul Centered Eating: In food.

Aliye Aydin: Yeah.

Soul Centered Eating: And so I'll go back to my eating out of grief. When my dad died. That started my emotional eating pattern, my whole decades of dieting. and It was 15 years ago. That I really had. Through some really great coaching.

Soul Centered Eating: Some insight. Because my mom married 14 months later and moved me away from my hometown. she said, You lost both parents. You lost your mom because she was busy with your step brother and…

Aliye Aydin: this is,

Soul Centered Eating: I'm trying to get used to a new husband. And I got lost. And so when I work with folks I'm looking at,…

00:25:00

Aliye Aydin: yeah.

Soul Centered Eating: what's lost inside you? Where's that Beautiful soul that you are. That's to see how beautiful we really are. But we don't realize that we Feeding Grief or that emotion to the degree. We are

Aliye Aydin: Yeah. I think that gets passed from generation to generation for me. I've realized that The emotional eating. I don't remember the exact moment that it started. But I do know that I've been doing it as long as I can remember, that's pretty common for people to comfort themselves with Food, And if that was something that your parents did for you, you're sad. you're this, let me make you a or how about, we have some, it just Really early on, it really takes a deep level of geez. It's a pattern and a habit, you just kind of live out without even thinking about it. I would…

Soul Centered Eating: Mother foods.

Aliye Aydin: What is that?

Soul Centered Eating: Mother foods That.

Aliye Aydin: Yeah.

Soul Centered Eating: You dear you and your boyfriend broke up. Let's make cookies.

Aliye Aydin: Right exactly and assigning meaning to that food, then those cookies equal comfort, Instead of like you're saying the emotions are out here,…

Soul Centered Eating: Yep.

Aliye Aydin: you're not feeling them inside and really addressing the emotions themselves. Right? Yeah,…

Soul Centered Eating: Yeah.

Aliye Aydin: I love that.

Aliye Aydin: so, we were going to talk about. Maybe this is related, I'm not sure why don't people like to cook. What is your observations and all this?

Soul Centered Eating: it's a big one. so when I look at it,

Aliye Aydin: Yeah. It's okay.

Aliye Aydin: Yeah.

Soul Centered Eating: and I've tried to trace back. But I really think that and it hasn't gone away. But Look at your life before Covid.

Soul Centered Eating: I think I know folks were not eating out. they are now. So I think For me, more and more.

Soul Centered Eating: that sense of feeling isolated or disconnected from People places and things during Became a norm, if you will.

Soul Centered Eating: And I don't think we're in a post-covid world.

Soul Centered Eating: Think it's certain kind of disconnect. What life was before covid? And yes, lots of folks ate during covid. I think the norm was that the average individual during Covid gained 15 to 17 pounds. I have a friend who's very thin who bought a bread maker and came with he pounds, because she was making Bread. so whoever you are wherever you are think about,…

Aliye Aydin: Right.

Soul Centered Eating: what was your eating like, what was going on before Covid? And so has,…

Aliye Aydin: Mmm.

Soul Centered Eating: this is evolved and now, we look at social media. Tiktok instagram, all of the things. and I do think our brain. Has been rewired.

Soul Centered Eating: To where?

Soul Centered Eating: We just eat and get on with it. And it's a throwaway container.

Aliye Aydin: Before.

Soul Centered Eating: So, I'm disconnected even Washing the dishes so to speak.

Aliye Aydin: Yeah. Yeah.

Soul Centered Eating: So, it's kind of a Pan. We're in a Pandemic of disconnect.

Soul Centered Eating: Even how we ate and lived before Covid?

Aliye Aydin: I would even say it's been going on for much longer than just before Cooking at home because of They don't know how, or It's too inconvenient or they don't have the desire. I mean, it's just so easy to eat food that you don't make yourself, right?

00:30:00

Soul Centered Eating: so I'm going to kind of take this and run with it.

Soul Centered Eating: One of the things that I saw God, Decades ago. Was a movie titled Water for Chocolate.

Aliye Aydin: Remember that one? Yeah.

Soul Centered Eating: And then comes the Johnny Depp movie. Of chocolat.

Aliye Aydin: Yes, uh-huh. Yeah.

Soul Centered Eating: if you can hang here with me. But I've looked at it is that the mind that Pairs the emotion that prepares your food. And I'm looking at food and everything Is the energy we ingest into our body. When we eat?

Aliye Aydin: Moving. Yes.

Soul Centered Eating: so, One of my arguments for not going out to eat that much of which I do cook. It's very simple cooking, but I do cook is because where am I emotionally to go out and eat and be exposed to different energy that I'm putting into my body?

Aliye Aydin: Mmm.

Soul Centered Eating: It's a quantum leap, but it's kind of one of those meanings that That I'll own That something that

Soul Centered Eating: that we take into consideration. Is that what were the emotions that prepared?

Soul Centered Eating: the shrimp. and the vegetables and The salad that I just ate. So,

Aliye Aydin: Person. This is

Soul Centered Eating: because as a society, our interconnected, We don't realize it…

Aliye Aydin: Most.

Soul Centered Eating: but we are interconnected.

Aliye Aydin: We are.

Soul Centered Eating: so, I think that I don't know. I mean, I could take it and hypothesize. this. But I think it's important that we

Soul Centered Eating: Look at the world, we live in. And just a little bit. Bigger way.

Soul Centered Eating: To see how we're all interconnected. I mean, I think this way. All the time when I'm driving down the freeway.

Aliye Aydin: Yeah.

Soul Centered Eating: and I see all these cars around me, we're interconnected. Just let somebody cut you off, boy. What?

Aliye Aydin: Right. Yes.

Soul Centered Eating: so, It makes sense. If we're interconnected on the freeway, we're interconnected in the restaurant.

Aliye Aydin: Absolutely.

Soul Centered Eating: So what does it mean?

Soul Centered Eating: When I realize I'm Have anxiety. And I'm eating for comfort. it's like, I picked up all this energy. I have my clients. I say, please go home from work and take a shower. The minute, you walk in the door and watch the wash the day off.

Aliye Aydin: Yeah, because we are energetic beings and even if we're not thinking about it, we're continually soaking up. What's around us? Right. Yeah,…

Soul Centered Eating: absolutely.

Aliye Aydin: that's what you're talking about. Yeah. So in a way were you saying I might have picked up on this wrong? It can be kind of un disconnecting to be eating out a lot. Is that what you were saying? meaning, so to your meaning,…

Soul Centered Eating: I like Yeah. I think for me to go out and eat

Aliye Aydin: Okay.

Soul Centered Eating: I have to be in.

Soul Centered Eating: I have to be aware of what I'm doing. That's all I'm saying.

Aliye Aydin: Yep. Because it's so easy to just be in this habit of pattern and asleep and go order the thing at the counter and eat the thing. And not even be aware, not you personally, but people in general were very disconnected from our eating itself. Yeah.

Soul Centered Eating: I do think that we eat a good amount of folks, eating mindlessly. and I think,

Aliye Aydin: Yeah.

Soul Centered Eating: Going through a drive- I won't even And yes, I do go to Starbucks. It's the one place I do go. And I do think about that that I'm ingesting this but I don't go through the drive through.

00:35:00

Aliye Aydin: Right. What are some? mindful eating, one thing that I learned actually in culinary school, I learned this was about chewing your food, each bite, 30 times. Until it completely just basically disappears out of your mouth. You're barely even swallowing, what are other things is there.

Soul Centered Eating: Yeah.

Aliye Aydin: Other things that you Suggest for clients.

Soul Centered Eating: If I could elaborate on that.

Aliye Aydin: Yeah, please.

Soul Centered Eating: The reason that we are encouraged to eat our food. To it is because digestion. Begins in the mouth. And folks don't realize that

Aliye Aydin: Right.

Aliye Aydin: Absolutely.

Soul Centered Eating: They think it goes through here and it hits my stomach. And then it's starting to digest. it begins in the mouth. So, for healthy digestion.

Aliye Aydin: Right.

Soul Centered Eating: You start. Breaking things down, I mean that's what chewing is breaking things down.

Aliye Aydin: Yeah. Yeah.

Soul Centered Eating: I don't know if answered your question, but

Aliye Aydin: No, you did. I think it can be really changing. I've told a few people about the chewing 30 times, and they look at me, like, I have two heads,…

Soul Centered Eating: No. Yeah.

Aliye Aydin: they're like,…

Soul Centered Eating: Right. Right.

Aliye Aydin: You bring me. But it really causes forces you to slow down and

Aliye Aydin: be aware of what you're doing.

Soul Centered Eating: I think another thing is Are you mindful enough to put your fork down when you're eating? It's hard to let go of that fork.

Aliye Aydin: Right.

Soul Centered Eating: Alright. Just sucker here.

Aliye Aydin: The shovel it. Let's get it done. I love it. So you don't eat out much, what inspires and motivates you to cook. At home, when you don't feel Is there anything particular?

Soul Centered Eating: Yeah, I don't want to go out.

Aliye Aydin: Yeah, right. I got an option, if you hungry

Soul Centered Eating: Yeah.

Soul Centered Eating: I just keep it simple and…

Aliye Aydin: Yeah.

Soul Centered Eating: Don't make a federal case out of it.

Soul Centered Eating: what can I cook? It doesn't create a lot of dishes to wash. Yeah, and

Aliye Aydin: Yeah, absolutely.

Soul Centered Eating: What's it going to feel like after I eat it?

Aliye Aydin: Yeah.

Soul Centered Eating: I think if folks could ask that question, okay, I mean

Soul Centered Eating: It comes to self-awareness and really self-respect. what is this going to feel like in my? Body.

Soul Centered Eating: After eating. Because I think that's…

Aliye Aydin: Yeah.

Soul Centered Eating: where a lot of.

Soul Centered Eating: Dissatisfaction comes from after we eat. And I'll go have dessert or I need this or I need that.

Soul Centered Eating: And then you're into the comfort and the emotional eating. to be able to say, What's that kind of? Feel like after I Absolute.

Aliye Aydin: I mean, physically feel my stomach will be upset or it'll have a headache or That type of thing.

Soul Centered Eating: Or even just feel kind of empty. There are some folks that can eat cold foods.

Aliye Aydin: Mmm.

Soul Centered Eating: Unfortunately the label has been put on women, you take the woman out to eat, she's going to order a salad. I can't eat salad.

Aliye Aydin: Right. Yeah.

Soul Centered Eating: Because I need warm foods.

Soul Centered Eating: Temperature wise, warm food for me to feel satisfied. So, whatever meal I eat. It's always got something cooked and warm. I remember one time going to I went for an acupuncture appointment and I'd been going to in for quite a while and I'd stopped at the smoothie place because I hadn't had time to eat. And I this beautiful green smoothie and,…

Aliye Aydin: Yeah.

Soul Centered Eating: here's 10 bucks or whatever and…

Aliye Aydin: Right.

Soul Centered Eating: walk in this office And he goes, here. Let me take that for you and he takes my drink. and as though, he put it in the fridge in the other room, and…

Aliye Aydin: 

Soul Centered Eating: I left I'm going, he never gave me back my smoothie. because he knew I shouldn't be drinking this.

00:40:00

Aliye Aydin: You eating cold foods. I love that, that's too funny. Yeah. Yeah,…

Soul Centered Eating: And he's awesome.

Aliye Aydin: that's great. Yeah, I don't think people realize for me ice cream. I can't eat ice cream at all. It gives me an immediate gut egg partly because of the dairy, but partly, because of the cold Yeah. That's so interesting.

Soul Centered Eating: But isn't it beautiful that, your body? I mean the more I listen to In tune with your body,…

Aliye Aydin: Absolutely absolutely. Absolutely. Yeah,…

Soul Centered Eating: your body.

Aliye Aydin: I mean it was how in general. So I come to cooking through this wellness Avenue. I'm sure I can eat terrible food. That makes me feel terrible, but then like you said, I'm not honoring myself. I don't feel great about myself and it's a spiral. Right. S. So I just love for me, cooking is an avenue of sovereignty for your health, So it's ability to control what you put into your body. In a very meaningful type of way, and not.

Aliye Aydin: When I say this, I think people Miss Construate is what I should be eating, kind of a guilt centered way and I'm like, No, no. That's not what I'm talking about. I'm talking about honoring your body. But also being compassionate, if you do need the thing, that made your body feel bad, that's okay. the world's not going to end, you don't have to beat yourself up. You can maybe look at why you did or didn't but there's no reason to Eat the thing that made you feel bad, then feel terrible about it because then I think that's the spiral.

Soul Centered Eating: That's where I would. Walk through steps of self inquiry.

Aliye Aydin: Yeah.

Soul Centered Eating: There's something eating at you or you wouldn't have eaten that way.

Aliye Aydin: Right, right. Yeah. I love that. I know this is more in depth and I'm going to ask but a simple way for people to start self inquiry if they're listening to this and they are speaking a foreign language but I am interested in what they're saying is there a simple way to start self inquiry? Or is it what you just said? why am I eating when I'm eating, or is it noticing how you're feeling? What is it that people can? Possibly.

Soul Centered Eating: I really asked Really, why?

Aliye Aydin: You rarely ask why? Okay. …

Soul Centered Eating: Why usually doesn't get a true answer. It's like the bug flying across the lake,…

Aliye Aydin: Okay.

Soul Centered Eating: ?

Aliye Aydin: Right.

Soul Centered Eating: 

Soul Centered Eating: I think just to begin Self-inquiry Byron. Katie. Is really great itself inquiry. And she just plows through it but that's her work. And for…

Aliye Aydin: Yeah.

Soul Centered Eating: self-inquiry, if somebody wants to start there, They have to realize. What I'm doing in life right now.

Soul Centered Eating: Isn't working for me. What step can I take? That will take me to a place of thriving instead of surviving.

Soul Centered Eating: How do I get off this treadmill? But you have to be at that. Place. To be ready e All of these. Stuffed.

Soul Centered Eating: Feelings. That have brought you to this point right now. Of knowing something's not working because I'm not thriving.

Aliye Aydin: Okay. Definitely.

Soul Centered Eating: To that answering question.

Aliye Aydin: Yeah. Yeah. Absolutely, that makes sense. thank you so much for this. I think this is a great conversation. Is there anything you'd like to add or? How can people get in touch with you if they're interested in working with you or learning more? Yeah.

Soul Centered Eating: Thank On my website. centered eating. And so since you're living, Calm. There's a little button,…

Aliye Aydin: Okay.

Soul Centered Eating: you can click that says, Book of Clarity call.

Soul Centered Eating: 3, 30 minute conversation with me. I'm happy to explore. What's going on with you? Maybe we work together, maybe it's a fit, maybe it's not.

Soul Centered Eating: And that's the best way they can. Follow me on Instagram.

Aliye Aydin: Yeah, I love what the things you say on Instagram? You're always sharing little nuggets on there that are just great.

00:45:00

Soul Centered Eating: I will give a plug there what's there today about bursting your bubble. boy, yes.

Aliye Aydin: Okay, I haven't seen it yet. I'll go watch it. I love it. thank you so much.

Soul Centered Eating: Thank you for inviting me. I appreciate it.