Season 1 Episode 3 of Quiet the Diet Podcast with Michelle Shapiro, RD
Strategies to Reduce Binge Eating using a Somatic EatingTM Approach
In this episode, Michelle chats with Stephanie Mara Fox, Somatic Nutritional Counselor and expert on strategies to reduce binge eating using her trademarked Somatic Eating approach. They discuss the connection between our mind and body, why we binge eat, and provide tangible tools to use before, during, and after an episode of binge or emotional eating. They talk about:
- Stephanie’s personal connection to disordered eating and digestive issues
- How our nervous system responds to a threat (or stress)
- Food as an experience of love and safety, especially during periods of trauma
- Why we binge eat
- Strategies to reduce binge eating and the Somatic EatingTM approach
- How to know when to sit in the discomfort and when to lean on behaviors
- Tapping into your internal authentic voice, healing your inner child
- Tools to check in with yourself throughout the day
This post is only for educational purposes. It is not nutrition or personalized medical advice. We want you to get the most from this post, but to keep that in mind as well.
Michelle Shapiro
I am so excited to have the brilliant, empathetic, lovely Stephanie Mara Fox with us today. Hi, Stephanie. I’m so happy you’re here.
Stephanie Mara Fox
I’m thrilled to connect with you. Again, I think you’re one of my favorite people to connect with in the world. So I’m super jazzed to be here right now,
Michelle Shapiro
I have to tell you something. What that means to me, you could never understand because I completely idolize you. So I’m so happy to hear you say that. But more importantly, I’m just so happy. You’re here today with us. I know that our listeners will get so much value from your unique perspective and trademarked program. So I’m going to have us just start off with of course, they already got a little taste of an introduction from you. But would you mind introducing yourself?
Stephanie Mara Fox
Yeah, absolutely. So I’m a somatic nutritional counselor, I have basically been working for over a decade with people all over the world helping them heal from patterns of binge eating, emotional eating, chronic dieting, body image concerns, unexplained digestive issues. So this has been a passion of mine for a really long time. And probably what isn’t spoken as much in my bio is that this also not only comes from a professional stance, five studied this for a really long time, but a personal stance of you know, in my early 20s, I had a lot of severe digestive issues. And that kind of also led into a lot of disordered eating. You know, it got to a point where, you know, if anyone has experienced digestive issues at a really young age, you’ll do basically anything to make that pain go away. And then all of a sudden, you’re only eating like five foods and wondering how did I get here. So I think there was just this mishmash of digestive issues and disordered eating and over exercising in my early, you know, in my early teens and early 20s. And what it led me the path that led me down was there was this root cause of trauma and dysregulation in my body. And that kind of really started to piece together my work with what I now call somatic eating. And so somatic eating is something that I’ve created over my decade of experience of supporting others also in healing their relationship with food. And it is a body oriented, sensation, focused therapeutic approach to eating. And what that basically means is that our relationship with food is information from our body. And our body doesn’t talk to us through words. It talks to us through sensation, it talks to us through urges, it talks to us through cravings and impulses. And if we can start to experience that our relationship with food and whatever is playing out with it, even we can see binge eating as wisdom from our body, we start to connect with that food pattern in a very different, more compassionate way.
Michelle Shapiro
I think if anyone takes one really important takeaway from this episode, it’s that Stephanie you help clients to transform what they perceive to be the shameful habits or something they feel embarrassed about and to a positive opportunity. And that opportunity is really learning about our body and bridging the gap between you know, what’s going on in our brain and what’s going on in our bodies and translating it to ourselves kind of like opening the telephone line between our bodies and our brain.
Stephanie Mara Fox
Yes, absolutely. Sure we could. We could really see whatever is playing out in our relationship with mood is a doorway into our body. And what I mean by that is we have this brilliant nervous system, our autonomic nervous system that turns on automatically, we don’t necessarily have to do anything to turn on that protective mechanism. In our system. If something is being perceived as threatening our autonomic nervous system, our sympathetic nervous system, which is part of that nervous system just unnaturally turns on. And so something that I really work with a lot of my clients is starting to understand how their body is talking to them through their food behaviors. And when you think about it, food is the first form of love we receive when we’re a baby. And, you know, like, I’m kind of cradling my arm right now, for those who are just listening. And if you think about it, like okay, if they hear you our little baby, like when you were being fed, whether it was breastfed or bottle fed, whatever it might have been, you’re being attuned to, you are being looked at, you’re being cared for. So there’s this very powerful experience we have with food. And I think a lot of individuals judge themselves for that of Food shouldn’t be love. Food should just be fuel, you know, all the messages we receive from diet culture. But food will always be an experience of love. And then, if you grew up in a household where you were Miss attuned to where your needs didn’t feel like they were being met, where it wasn’t safe to express yourself emotionally, then food BB naturally came in to support you in feeling that sense of safety. And you knew it, you knew it already, it was already ingrained in your body of where can I get this sense of safety, I’m not getting it from these external people. So I need to create it for myself. And then here comes food if food was available in your household to just go and walk into the kitchen and reach for that. So I think a lot of individuals judge themselves so harshly, why can’t I just stop reaching for food? And I think we need to change the question a little bit to how is this food behavior supporting and protecting me in some way, you know, we get to start to view it just with a different perspective.
Michelle Shapiro
And I think that shift in perspective is probably the most important and transformative shift someone can make when they’re interacting with something like binge eating or feeling like they’re overeating, or feeling like they’re out of control with food, the idea that we binge eat to support ourselves or serve ourselves. Just knowing that idea can be an immediate shift for people and can be an immediate shift in people’s nervous systems to which is so powerful. I would be remiss if I did not back us up to something you said before, that was just so important to lay the foundation for our talk today, which is that you were experiencing disordered eating from a bodily dysfunction, let’s call it which was your or a bodily symptom that your body was communicating to you. When we think of disordered eating or eating disorders, we generally think of them as being something that starts with a psychological issue, and then translates into a food behavior. Can you tell me how that can actually be flipped? And how something that’s going on in your body can translate into a food behavior?
Stephanie Mara Fox
Yeah. So first, let’s get at the core was that my body was trying to navigate a trauma response. When we are predominantly living in a trauma response, we’re living more in a sympathetic nervous system fight or flight or freeze response. And so when you think about it, okay, if I’m constantly living in a fight or flight response, my blood, my resources are all kind of moving away from my digestive tract. They’re going to my limbs to be able to fight or to fleet. So then digestion shuts down. And I think a lot of individuals, just when you’re having a digestive issue, you think it’s the problem is with food, I’m eating incorrectly, I have a food sensitivity, which could be part of it. You know, all of the blame goes on to the food piece where actually we can kind of get curious about what state what bodily state are you eating the food in. And so here I am, and I’m eating mostly in a fight or flight response, because of the trauma response that I’m navigating in my body that I did not know, I did not know until much, much later, into probably my mid 20s really started understanding what was going on. And then it’s like, okay, something’s wrong with my digestion. And also, I was severely bloated all the time, just very uncomfortable, and can also get confusing of like, Oh, my belly looks so quote unquote, big all the time. And then here comes diet culture, that it’s just like, oh, Do you need to lose weight, it gets really, really confusing, where all of these things start to layer on top of it, where you’re like, Okay, I’m going to try this diet. All right, you’re telling me I should try the Candida cleanse? Okay, you know, like I should do all of these things were really at the core of it was I did not feel safe in my body. And I think that that is such a huge thing that I explore with most of the individuals that I work with now that we cannot heal, we cannot have easy digestion, we cannot kind of start to transform our food behaviors, or even know what resonates with our system, until we move into that parasympathetic nervous system relaxation response.
Michelle Shapiro
Just for a visual for people. When we think about that sympathetic response, we’re thinking about if you were, you know, back in time, at some point, and you were in a cave and a bear came up to you, your body would say, hey, how the heck do we get away from this bear. And so we need to, like Stephanie said, divert resources, from our certain, like our digestive organs, to our heart, get it pumping to our limbs, to make sure that we can run in time for this event, what’s happening is, is that we’re encountering things that feel like bears all the time, and not even realizing. And so our sympathetic nervous system is constantly activated, and your body’s actually not able to digest food. In a sympathetic state, it actually has to be in a parasympathetic state to digest food, we call it the rest and digest state. So I’m just again, this is exactly what you just said, I’m just pounding the point. And just so people understand how important it is to be in that state. So it wouldn’t matter what foods you’re eating, how you’re eating them, and how your body’s receiving them is actually more important. So in your personal even situation, Stephanie, you notice, you started to make all these food restrictions, and they didn’t even help you because your body was not in that relaxed rest and digest state around food. And that translated into these disordered thoughts around food and disorder behaviors.
Stephanie Mara Fox
Yeah, I’m so glad that you added that back in. And that is kind of what I explore with a lot of those that I work with as well, is that when they’ve been dieting for decades, and nothing has basically healed in their relationship with food, and their digestion has potentially even gotten worse, is that also we can start to experience dieting as putting you in a fight or flight response? Absolutely. Because there’s rules, there’s regulations, there’s structure, there’s right and wrong. And sometimes I’ll even explore how if we are navigating trauma, a trauma response in our body, that dieting can kind of mimic that, you know, when you think about it, trauma and like a traumatic experience and dieting, both take away our sense of No, they take away our sense of choice. And they kind of say this is now what you need to believe. So sometimes we can be really drawn to dieting, simply because it mimics in our body what we already know, if we were already living in more of a fight or flight response, that here comes the diet, and it’s like, Oh, this feels familiar, that must be it means it’s good, because it feels familiar. But oftentimes, when we’re healing our relationship with food, that I like to normalize, that when you’re healing patterns of let’s say binge eating, it’s not going to feel good at first. Because when you don’t do the behavior, your body’s going to be like, Wait, are we okay? Like you’re not doing the thing that we’ve been doing for maybe decades, that helps us feel safe in the world. And so at first, it’s going to feel threatening, it’s going to feel scary, it’s going to feel even just like push you outside. But there’s this thing called your window of tolerance. So what you can tolerate, and it might push you outside of that, where then you find yourself just going back to the behavior. But then diet culture says Oh, you just don’t have enough willpower come follow us come follow this diet won’t get you back into quote, unquote, control. But really, at the core of it is you don’t feel safe, that you maybe are living in dysregulation. And then if we actually start addressing how to notice when you are dysregulated, because the goal isn’t to be regulated all the time. We naturally go in and out of regulation and dysregulation all day long. Every day, our entire lives. It’s to notice, oh, how does my body tell me when I am feeling a lack of safety when I’m feeling a little too stressed out when I am feeling really overwhelmed so that we start addressing the body immediately when it says I need your support in maybe non food ways sometimes in food ways to and then our food behaviors that we’re trying to sometimes attack and quote unquote fix just kind of naturally get to heal on their own because food is released. From the responsibility of supporting us in emotionally regulating,
Michelle Shapiro
absolutely, and I like the idea that if someone is binge eating or feeling like they’re quote, unquote, over eating, it’s an experience that they’re doing to protect themselves. And so I would say if you are experiencing binge eating that feels really uncomfortable, and something that you want to change, just start off by just saying, How smart Am I to give myself something that’s going to make me feel better. It’s an it’s actually an amazing adaptive evolutionary tool to use, you feel not good in some way, whether it be physically mentally, and then you say, Hey, I’ve got an excellent solution for that. For some people, binge eating can feel really shameful, because it feels like something, again, they’re doing that’s wrong. It feels like there’s a betrayal of either self or outside of self. And I just want us to start off this piece of the conversation by saying, you made a smart move, I like it. And if it’s something that you want to change, we’re going to give you some supportive ideas and philosophies and concepts that might, you might be able to implement, to use the opportunity of self reflection even more. So let’s start there and just say, if binge eating is a part of your life and something you’re struggling with, we’re proud of you. We dig it. And I think it’s a really good starting point, as you’re a person who is learning to self soothe. I think that seems like a good starting point. So the interesting thing about reducing binge eating is that, you know, Stephanie and I are like, two people who feel like almost exactly the same about this. And it’s so rare, I feel like because you’ll hear me talking about in other episodes of the podcast, the nutritional world is very divided between what would be more like intuitive eating, and what would be more like considered diet culture. And anything could fall into those two camps, so to speak, when I hear of binge eating, the conventional treatment of binge eating that I see either in eating disorder facilities or on social media, anywhere is the physical approach of eat enough protein, eat frequently enough, and make sure your cravings don’t get too large. And then, you know, you get yourself into a situation where you don’t eat all day. And then you end up binge eating as an evolutionary response, biological response, right? Makes total sense. That’s a really effective part of the nutrition puzzle, controlling blood sugar, all these things. The other thing I’m seeing a lot from the anti diet culture crew, the anti diet crew, is really liberating food restrictions and making sure hey, if you restrict to food, you’re going to binge on a food. So make sure that you just open up those food restrictions. The way that you practice, Stephanie, I know that I practice is more than just those two modalities, you actually introduce other strategies to reduce binge eating, can we start to talk about those other strategies to reduce binge eating that you use that I think are like, super innovative and super supportive? And not again, the conventional treatment?
Stephanie Mara Fox
Yeah, I so appreciate you even laying that out. Because it just shows how, oh my gosh, we are not that simple. As human beings, you have these two choices, just like balanced your nutrition or like II everything. You know that? Yes, both strategies to reduce binge eating are are effective. And really important. I’ve seen absolutely individuals say, Oh, wow, like my macronutrients were imbalanced. And I was not eating consistently throughout the day. And that did make a huge difference. And I’ve seen other individuals that when they finally let go of all the rules and the regulations and just said, Hey, I can eat whatever I want to eat, that that actually started moving them towards healing as well. So I never like to demonize any strategy that reduces binge eating. It really has to be what uniquely works for you. But if we start to bring in this nervous system perspective, as well, let’s say someone says, Okay, we really need to work you towards being able to neutralize all foods, and just eat whatever you want to eat. Okay, you’ve been living with rules and regulations and that structure for maybe decades for a reason, and to push you so outside your comfort zone to quickly, we’ll actually just bring all those food behaviors back as a sense of safety and protection, because that felt too overwhelming to engage in that food behavior. So we first kind of have to chunk it down more into bite sized pieces of what feels like a manageable doable step. And what I often find a smaller step could be was after you binge, could you start checking in with yourself so that you stop self abandoning? And it’s like, okay, I benched. There was nothing wrong with that there was nothing wrong with that behavior, we start to interrupt the judger that shows up because they just want to come in and that inner judger wants to do their job because they’re like, Okay, if we judge you hard enough, you won’t do this again. But often you do because the judger feels intense in your body. And so then food comes in again to try to self soothe. So if we start to break you out of that cycle of just okay, why did I meet that in the This moment, let me get really curious. And so I’m asking also a lot of mental questions that if you aren’t feeling safe enough, even in your body, like it just is like, wow, I just had this huge binge, I feel very uncomfortable. I’m judging myself harshly, that we cannot talk our way out of a lack of safety. Like, you can’t just say, Oh, don’t worry about it, you’re just safe, you’re fine. Like, it’s fine. We did that. Because this is an experience that’s happening inside of your body, not your mind. So sometimes after you bench you might have to first get into your body before you do this mental contemplation around, why did I need that. And that can look like shaking. And when you think about that, so, you know, I always like to reference my dog because he is scared of everything. Sweetheart, he’s a little Corgi mix dog and pieces. And he just gets scared of a lot of things. And so you know, I’ll see his hair stand up on his back. And he will not shake until he is absolutely sure that that threat, that dog that thing, whatever it was, has passed. And that is actually something that we can do as human beings, that we also need to sometimes shake off the experience of threat. And what that honestly does inside of our body, is it tells your body, the threat has passed, just like an animal does it, we don’t need to be in the sympathetic nervous system here, we haven’t done anything wrong. So this might even look like turning on music and dancing around a room, you get into a non verbal place, and actually get into your body to say, Okay, I needed that for some reason, and I can start to show my body, I am safe now. And I like to say to everyone that I work with that it’s never too late to check in with yourself, you might check in with yourself and catch yourself before you start engaging in the binge eating behavior, you might catch yourself right in the middle. And sometimes you’re gonna catch yourself afterwards, it is never too late to start to reconnect and riaan body.
Michelle Shapiro
And there’s always a lesson at any point during this experience. So if you check in with yourself in the beginning, there might be a lesson if you check in with yourself after there might be a lesson, this idea of stress tolerance, and what your threshold is, is really, I think important for people because pre a binge, when you start to notice the sensations coming up. And what I would credit you with Stephanie, that you do so beautifully is always connecting the mind and the body back. So it’s the word somatic meaning of or related to the body, right? We think about in again, a binge eating pre binge eating state, we’re noticing a lot of the thoughts that might be coming up. And sometimes we don’t, but we’re not noticing the bodily sensations. So checking in with the bodily sensations before after can let us know what our tolerance and what that threshold is. Because sometimes there’s a time to feel uncomfortable. And sometimes there’s a time to move into a new, you know, move out of the sympathetic nervous system stage. And it can be uncomfortable to switch from sympathetic to parasympathetic. So knowing where you are and what you need, like sometimes, again, we can bear down and tolerate a little bit of discomfort, like maybe before bench saying like, Oh, this feels icky. I don’t like this. And we can appreciate that. But when it gets to a certain point where it becomes overwhelming, we also need to know when it’s time to shake it off, and move past it. And when you say shake, the image I have that I use with clients is like I just shake your right arm five times left arm five times right leg five times left leg five times. But if you have other shaking strategies to reduce binge eating, that’s good. But I think the shaking comes at a time when the threshold of you know stress tolerance has been surpassed How would someone know when it’s time to sit in the discomfort versus when it’s time to shake? Or you know, switch that neurological system response? How do we know when it’s time to do that?
Stephanie Mara Fox
Yeah, I think that’s such a great question. So I think that one thing about binge eating is that I have had a lot of individuals describe it as it feels like a wolf takes over that you don’t feel like you have any choice but to binge and so in that experience, saying, Okay, I’m gonna try not to binge right now, might feel just a little bit too much in that moment. You are already kind of in your amygdala, you are in your fear response part of your brain. And I just want to normalize that, you know, a lot of individuals are like, why can I make a different choice here? Well, you’re not in the part of your brain, your prefrontal cortex, where we do logic reasoning, you know, decision making, that’s not where you are. To be able to make a different choice. So sometimes it is doing the behavior and then saying, I have a choice now of how I show up for myself. And that’s where you get to start to shift and change, starting to move into a relaxation response even after the behavior. No, a lot of the time, you may notice and you know, for anyone listening right now start to pay attention to how you feel a different parts of the days, like away from when you normally engage in a binge eating or emotional eating behavior. So this might be when you first wake up in the morning, you might notice that your breath feels a little bit easier, you might notice that your body feels a little bit more relaxed, like your shoulders are kind of down onto your back, you might notice that your tummy feels really just like relaxed, there’s no tension there yet, your forehead, you know, sometimes we get that crease throughout the day, as we get through more stress. You know, there’s, there’s just a lot of things that you can track through your body of like, oh, okay, this might be the experience that I’m feeling more relaxed right now. Now, when we’re tracking that kind of bodily experience in our body, that can be a sign that that could be a day, or even a moment where you try something new, you already are in a relaxation response. That’s where it won’t push you further outside of what you can tolerate. Because you’re already in a space where you’re like, Okay, I’m feeling connected, I’m feeling regulated, I feel like I could try something new in this place. Now, if you start to notice, and this might even be like, you try something new, more at the earlier parts of the day, where you’re well rested, where it feels like I can tolerate this and flow with this. Whereas as the days go on, sometimes you might need to lean more on your more behaviors with food that support you and feeling safe. And that can look like some things that maybe you even learned from diet culture, okay, I’m gonna have this specific meal and this specific food, because if that supports you, and feeling safe, and connected and grounded, that’s okay, that’s okay to lean on that behavior for a period of time. Because the whole goal here is to support you in finding a relationship with food that just works for you. And that also might mean that as you heal patterns of let’s say, binge eating, that you may discover a food you use to eat when maybe you were quote, unquote, dieting, and then just like that kind of very rigid control with food, you may discover, I really enjoy that food, that is actually a food that resonates with my body, it makes me feel good. So we have to sometimes heal our relationship with certain foods, and put more trust back in our body that we can eat those foods. And that doesn’t mean that we’re dieting, it just does facilitate a safety response in our body. And your body is communicating with you constantly around what works for it and what doesn’t.
Michelle Shapiro
I think there’s no safer feeling in the world than you listening to what your body asks of you. So whatever that looks like, could be right. So I love that you’ve neutralized even something that’s a quote unquote, diet culture rule as being not morally bad to follow. As long as you are listening to your own body, my kind of concern about when people are doing only food freedom things, or they’re only doing diet culture things is that ultimately, there’s no interaction with the self on those decisions. There’s no autonomy. Even if you’re saying, hey, no foods are bad, that’s still not a choice you’re making. That’s an idea that someone else told you would be helpful for you. So I think the answer to you know, what is the Edit approach that really, Stephanie, I think you have nailed is that somatic and self listening tool. That is the rules still have to come from you. And this is really, again, neurologically, I mean, nervous system challenging. Because, again, people don’t want to come up with their own rules. They want other people’s rules, they’re more comfortable. I got it, I totally know. But that’s an end game thing is to listen to yourself. So by the time someone’s amygdala is making their decisions for them, there’s probably been a bit of conversation already going on and a bit of a build up of the fear response going on. Can we talk about the hours before a binge happens and how they are tied in to the actual binge to
Stephanie Mara Fox
Yeah, so let’s take the example of a day where you wake up in the morning and you have a fight with a loved one. It happens to all of us, right? It happens to all of us sometimes. So if there was a break in that relationship, let’s say without a repair, there was no time maybe you both had to go off to work and there was no opportunity to really talk out get on the same page. So you’re kind of already living in a fight or flight response. And then the story start to build, where it’s just like, oh my gosh, like, what’s gonna happen here or I’m so angry at them like, maybe I should just leave them or like all the like, you know, catastrophizing that can we can do in our brains. And that starts to build and build a build where, let’s say you miss lunch, because you’re like so angry, and you’re so hurt, or you’re so confused, that you totally bypass any hunger or fullness cues. And this is why I really kind of think of somatic eating as the step before intuitive eating. Because oftentimes, what I find is that individuals come to me saying, I don’t even know what hunger and fullness feels like in my body. And of course, you don’t, if you are living predominantly in a fight or flight response, or you’re navigating a trauma response in your body, your digestion is shut down, it is incredibly difficult to hear your hunger and fullness cues in that state. So that’s one of the core tenants is like, listen to your hunger and fullness cues and intuitive eating. But for a lot of individuals, that’s actually really, really hard to do with just the bodily state that you’re living in. And there’s some kind of nervous system regulation that needs to happen first, before you’re able to do that. So I just kind of wanted to add that in important that, you know, it’s important that you know, okay, so then you’re living in this fight or flight response, your digestion is shut down, you didn’t even know you were hungry for lunch, you skip that you come home, you’re still angry, but now you’re getting voracious, and your body needs food, it needs consistent nourishment every single day. And so at some point your body is going to take over. And if we could start to sometimes even see, sometimes I will actually call binge eating more like protective eating, because your body’s taking over to be like, Okay, you’re not going to give me the nourishment I need, I’m going to make sure I get the nourishment I need. And biologically, we will kind of go towards more higher carbohydrate, more rich, sugary foods. Because evolutionarily we know that is going to bring our blood sugar level right back up, that is going to sustain us it’s going to get that you know the nutrition that we need in really quickly that a lot of individuals are like why do I always choose this particular food, there’s actually a reason like your body’s trying to get what it means as fast as possible to make sure that you are going to be all right. So if we can start to kind of even experience our food impulses as our body’s way of trying to be on our team, to trying to help us there’s not something wrong with you, you’re not something to be fixed. And all this build up then towards your you are in the afternoon or evenings are actually all this rich information has been happening in your body where your body’s like, I need you. I’m scared. I need your help. I don’t know if we’re okay. It was there a threat this morning. Are we all right? That if we don’t slow down and tune in and say okay, yes, this happened? Yes, it was upsetting. Yes, I am mad right now that if we just bypass all those cues, then food comes in to help us regulate.
Michelle Shapiro
Absolutely. And I think that, again, just knowing how self preservation plays a role here and how our body will defend us even with without our consent, almost right, our body will come to defend us. And another really important thing you said, which is that just from a functional nutrition perspective, consuming high carbs, reduces your cortisol. So that’s also why you’re actually like helping to reduce your cortisol output so that your stress hormones aren’t as high and pumping, that can feel really relaxing. You also can release like, you know, different happy hormones from consuming high carbohydrates or high fat. So binge eating is, as we said before, super effective at altering your body’s chemistry. So if we notice that your body is basically making a call to action, and you’re picking up the call and responding, we can also learn that we can pick up the call to and answer a little bit earlier, too. And I think that’s what’s important is that what people don’t realize is, when they’re sitting in traffic, there’s a physiological reaction happening. When they get into a fight with a family member. There’s a physiological stress response happening. So knowing that there’s all these chemical responses, there’s that call to check in again with with oneself and see hey, where is my physiology today? The other thing I really want to talk about too, is that what I’ve noticed and you said there’s that really protective voice that comes in is like we’re Benjen you know, that’s that voice. What I’ve been seeing with a lot of my clients is you can start to identify the conversation before a binge and this is a play a nutritional version of internal family systems ifs, which is that we have these different parts of ourselves that are always interacting to try to support us and help us, what I’ve really been seeing in my clients is totally anecdotal. And I’m just sharing with you, Stephanie to see what your feedback is, is that I’m hearing a very distinct conversation recently. And the conversation goes like this. It’s, hey, I don’t feel good. Let’s do something to help me. Alright, let’s eat something, you know, savory, let’s eat something karbi to help us response being No, you shouldn’t eat that response being Yes, you should, because diet, freedom, and food freedom. And then there’s another voice that comes in and says, I don’t want to hear this conversation for another second, this is what we’re doing. And that’s that final protective voice. I think a lot of people think that that beginning conversation isn’t happening. And it’s just the binge kind of attacks you like the wolf just comes out, and it’s happening. But you actually have the opportunity to tune into any of those voices. And my strategies to reduce binge eating just allow them to happen. Don’t fight them. Don’t you don’t even necessarily need to interact, but get to know who those different voices are. And now that I’m giving you my nutritional version of this, tell me what have you used ifs or something similar to it and your work or your own trademarked version of X? Knowing you, you probably have one? Tell me about how parts theory plays in for you.
Stephanie Mara Fox
Yeah, I absolutely have incorporated parts work into my work as well. I’ve simplified it a little bit and getting curious about is there an inner child and inner teenager or an inner adult choosing your food right now? And just getting really curious about who is doing the eating? And I think it’s one of the most powerful questions that those that I work with start to play with. Because once you start kind of inviting in of like, okay, is this me? Or is this another part of me that’s trying to get something from me, you create a little bit of distance of just like, oh, just because I have this urge present doesn’t necessarily mean I need to act on it. And that’s one of the greatest things that we need to start doing is we need to start incorporating more pauses between reaction and action, because the reaction is happening in a sympathetic nervous system response. And these parts of us come in to try to help us help us feel safe, help us feel regulated, help us feel seen and loved and heard. And they’re just like, Okay, so like, you’re feeling upset. And like, here comes my inner child. Oh, we’re not feeling seen today. So like, let’s go to some food. Let’s get some, you know, whatever memory you have about a specific food, you know, I think also getting really reflective on the foods that you choose to eat, you often choose for a reason, because we have specific embodied memories around certain foods, so you can start to get curious about, okay, if this was a part of me, how old are they? And what memories do I have around this food, because oftentimes, it’s not about the food itself. It’s about we want to feel the same way we felt when we ate that food at that age when we were younger, because maybe we were with our best friends when we were a teenager. And we felt connected, and we felt like we belonged. And we felt loved. And if we’re not feeling those things present day, then our inner teenager is going to come right in and says, Oh, we should go eat that food. All that sort of makes us feel like we belong. But really, it’s that food might not actually resonate in your like, adult body self today with you anymore. But we’re connecting the bodily experience of that’s going to make me feel the way I want to feel. And that’s why we kind of have to drop down into creating new memories are with these foods when we are in a relaxation response to say, Okay, how does this food actually make me feel, and you start to kind of disconnect, okay, I now know that eating that food doesn’t actually leave me feeling like loved and cared for, and like I belong in my present day self. And when I eat it all on my own in my home in isolation, because oftentimes, these behaviors happen, we are by herself, not with other people, it’s very secret, there’s a lot of shame that goes along with it oftentimes. And so then we can start to utilize the urge to reach for that specific food is information that some part of us is showing up and needs our support.
Michelle Shapiro
Totally. And this can be done again, at any stage throughout and you can tap into any of these voices, at any point from the beginning of the day from minutes before the binge and, and identifying these voices, and just allowing them to communicate with you and allowing, hey, you know, there’s one voice it’s an inner child says I would love to eat this food. It makes me feel like childhood. And instead of like you said, introducing the pause between the reaction and the thought is so essential for people because I think in the model of intuitive eating, it’s let that inner child talk and make a decision based on that inner child. What we’re talking about is allowing the inner child to talk awk and sometimes that’s it. Sometimes you’re just letting the inner child talk, we don’t have to act on the voices, we just have to acknowledge that the voices exist for them to help us, because we want them to help us and we want to help them too. I think that’s really what’s important. And I know I see a lot on social media people eating like, I don’t know, it could be like cosmic brownies from Child’s and being like, oh my gosh, you have to eat these if they taste like childhood. You don’t have to do the things that felt good in childhood, you can actually create, like you said, new neural pathways, and new sensations based on foods that also biologically fit with you during a time where you feel really relaxed too.
Stephanie Mara Fox
Yeah, I so agree with all of that, you know, the research of Dr. Daniel Siegel, he kind of talked about how and it’s a really simple strategy that a lot of individuals are like, Why would just naming how I feel change anything. But actually, when we start to put language to, I feel upset, I feel angry, I feel the urge to binge, it moves us actually from our amygdala to our prefrontal cortex, where then we have choice of how we want to respond to that. So even just the simple practice of just name what is present. It’s like, okay, I have the urge to binge. All right, my inner child is really present. What is my inner child saying? They’re saying, I have to go eat this food right now? Hmm. Interesting. It’s kind of like if you think about children really learn to self regulate through sometimes throwing a temper tantrum. And if you were told, You’re not allowed to throw a temper tantrum, get over it, you have to move through this faster, I’m not going to sit by you through this. Sometimes your ability to learn how to self regulate can get interrupted. And so you now get to be the parent to your inner child where you’re holding space for them and you like girl, you temper tantrum, all you want to, you are so upset today, right now you just want me to go eat that food, I hear you I am so in this with you. You know, we know there’s a lot of really powerful videos out there of, you know, just the parent holding space for their kid and throwing a temper tantrum and letting it go on for as long as it needs to. And that can actually be really healing for us to do that for ourselves. Where it’s like, it’s okay. It’s okay that you’re upset. I’ve got you, I’m here for you. I’m not going to go anywhere. It is okay, that you want to reach for this food right now. And maybe we will. You know, I think that also sometimes we think that success is not reaching for the food. And I want to kind of reframe that sometimes it’s I’m noticing the urge to reach for this food. I’m staying connected to myself, I’m getting curious about it, I’m reconnecting with my body. And then you might go reach for the food anyway. Sure, because you’re owning that decision that that feels like the best choice for you in that moment. And I never want to take that off your list of choices. It always gets to be an option for you. What because, like you said before food, it produces dopamine and endorphins and serotonin and it just feels good to eat. So absolutely food is regulating. The thing is, is that we want to add on to your list of regulating strategies so that food is not your only option.
Michelle Shapiro
Absolutely. And I think that when we feel a discomfort, we have a couple choices, we can tolerate the discomfort, we can do something to squash the discomfort, we can explore the discomfort. And I think that what a lot of people think is there’s only really like one option, which is like, you can’t binge and you can’t you have to tolerate the discomfort as much as possible. Or then they think option two is oh, I have to binge and there really is, you know, given a certain timeframe, a third option, which is exploring, accepting, acknowledging, you know, again, one of my concerns with what people are receiving from more of the all foods fit kind of mentality is if I had a I Michelle Shapiro had a voice in my head that said, like, you need to binge eat and then I had another voice say like, No, you’re not gonna feel good after and a third voice came out, it was like, you can eat whatever you want, because you’re wonderful. I would like kill that voice because that’s not my voice and it’s it would feel to me like gaslighting myself. So I think what’s also really important is when we’re exploring these voices, making sure they’re coming from us, and not that they’re coming from someone else, even if it’s a nice sweet coddling lovely voice. If it doesn’t feel like your own, you’re still gonna feel like you’re gaslighting yourself. So the goal is not to listen to how your body feels and listen and respond always it’s really just to listen and accept what comes up and in that you can tolerate a certain amount of discomfort and like you said, if it gets too overwhelming, shake it out, move on, but there is a element here where or, you know, as a part of supporting binge eating? I think tolerance of discomfort is it’s an okay part of it too, but not pain and not extreme discomfort. Can you speak on that too?
Stephanie Mara Fox
Yeah, absolutely. I appreciate you naming that, that sometimes, if you feel like not doing the food behavior is going to push you further into dysregulation, then actually, your best option is just sometimes to do the food behavior. And that really interesting thing, and I’ve seen this over and over again, in my practice is that as soon as you start really saying, I’m allowed to do this, this is okay, this is supporting me in some way that you already start to regulate, just by saying it’s okay to do this, that then the binge eating behavior, it might be in less frequency, it might last not as long as it used to. And you might even notice yourself having a very different experience within it where, you know, I call it like an embodied emotional eating experience, where it’s, you’re saying, Okay, I’m choosing this, this is what I’m choosing right now. And I can notice when I feel regulated enough to then move on to something else. So sometimes we we need to choose the food, and it regulates us just enough to then be able to move on to something else. So I don’t want to even say that the binge eating behavior is always the wrong choice. Absolutely not. Yeah, sometimes we just have to get curious about who is choosing this binge eating? What are they looking for? Do I have the capacity right now to meet that need in a different non food way? If the answer is no, then you get to choose to go eat. And just by bringing on the sense of choice can also be very, if you’re navigating, and trauma response can also be very healing for trauma as well, because you’re bringing back in your sense of choice where trauma took that away from you. And that’s oftentimes a lot of the reasons why like a binge eating behavior came in to begin with, to give you like, I get to choose, that choice got taken away from me. So I get to choose how much I eat when I eat, how much in whatever quantity I want. And so as you just say, Oh, this is okay, yeah, you can choose this, you start regulating, you start feeling safer, and then that food behavior can change.
Michelle Shapiro
I think it’s so important to say that if two different people engaged in the same Bejing episode, a person who applied curiosity and acceptance around it would be more trauma healing, I guess in that episode, then someone who went through it blindly, and then judge themselves for it. So just applying curious, this is what I’m gonna, I’m asking you this, just applying curiosity and acceptance in and of itself can be trauma healing?
Stephanie Mara Fox
Well, I’m not quite sure about what all of the research says on you know, there’s many layers to trauma healing. So I just want to say that because I never like to simplify, like trauma healing down to just like, Okay, you just need to get curious. It’s not a fixing thing. Yeah, no, no, right, right. But there is a lot of really great research on how empathy and compassion can be incredibly healing. And when you invite in a sense of curiosity, you give yourself a sense of choice, and the experience of choice can be very healing for trauma. So I just want to add that, and I think it’s also just to kind of complete what we were talking about before with just even bringing this parts work piece in, is that start to get to know when your adult present day self is choosing your food? What does that feel like in your body, what sensations show up? And so once you start to get to know, oh, my adult self, my present day self feels like this. When I choose foods from that place, it feels like this. And then whenever you are not feeling that you can get curious about Oh, who’s showing up right now. And you can kind of hold space for that part of you that says, Well, I really want you to go eat this. And your adult self can say, I really hear that this part of you wants you to go eat this, but we’ve had that experience and it actually really doesn’t feel good in our body. And I think that that’s where I have found over and over again, that individuals come to me saying I’ve been trying to do the thing where I just eat whatever I want to eat, and I feel completely out of control. I think that actually sometimes when individuals go there too quickly, like yes, I want you to feel safe around all foods. But I think also healing your relationship with setting boundaries is really important that you get to choose you get to decide and that means that if a food doesn’t resonate with your body, it does leave you feeling, you know, uncomfortable in your system, that you are allowed to say no to that food, not because you are on a diet, but because you’re deeply listening to your body and its feedback. And it’s telling you, hey, this doesn’t work. For us, this doesn’t feel good,
Michelle Shapiro
the choice that you’re making is almost less important, the choice that you’re making in ways that the foods you’re choosing or choosing to binge eat is almost less important than who’s steering the ship to make that decision. So it can be the difference between that maybe one of my voices again, is like, you should knead bread. But then if I come out, you know, real Michelle comes out and says, like, you actually feel like terrible when you eat gluten, like, let’s be honest about that. That’s a whole different interaction. And you can even be, I can feel almost like a blue color of coming from my gut when it’s my real voice. And then when it’s like one of those alternative voices, that could be like a red color coming from like, you know, a girl, like my solar plexus or something, start to know and get comfortable with those voices. And you’ll know who’s the real voice because they’re usually a little more data driven, a little more relaxed, and they can respond again, with both logic and empathy. So it’s very obvious again, to me, when I have that hardcore, like, there’s like this version of me that has like, wears red lipstick, and like, it’s like wearing a leather jacket, and is like smoking a cigarette, like, you’re not going to eat that. And then that me comes out, it’s like, alright, you gotta calm down, it’s a piece of bread, like, we really don’t need to have a conversation about this, you know, get to know and feel who those voices are, I think is so important for people and understand that these conversations and these physiological reactions are happening all day. And the more you check in, and the more you apply curiosity, the more you get from them, like every single time,
Stephanie Mara Fox
I just wanted to add that I love that you just described what they looked like, I think that’s actually really important is start to see this part of you, you might even take out some pictures of you as an as a young child, or even in your teenage years, take a picture of it on your phone, carry this around with you. So you feel like you’re actually talking with them. What are they wearing? What are they doing? Like? How do they you know, express themselves, what colors are they’re wearing, because then you have this very tangible part of you that you can interact with where you can see them. And they’re being super sassy, or they’re being very demanding. And you’re just like, oh, yeah, yeah, I see you. And what did I need when I was a teenager, and I was being super demanding, I wanted to be seen, okay, I see you, hi, you are not being ignored, I am not going to abandon you, I am not going to just ignore your needs, they are important to me. And maybe there are different ways for us to get our needs met. Because I know all you know how to do to get your needs met is through food. So we really also want to meet that part with a lot of compassion, that, of course, they’re just telling you to go reach for that food, because maybe that was all they learned was available to them, and how to get their needs met. And it’s starting to unearth, okay, what was the underlying need, before you started to reach for food that I could start to meet that in a different way. So I just loved that you just really kind of went into like what this part of you looks like. And I think that’s actually a really important and handy trick to do for oneself as well.
Michelle Shapiro
I love creating that visual of who that person is. And again, in in hearing that person and knowing like, I know, like hard, let’s call her hardcore. Michelle, I have another word for her. But I won’t use that word on this podcast with you, Stephanie, I use it on other ones, you’re too polite.
Stephanie Mara Fox
Oh, you can bring it if you want to.
Michelle Shapiro
She’s b*tch Michelle, she’s b*tch Michelle. She’s like, literally smoking a cigarette. She’s like, you’re gonna wear that, you know, when I first started identifying her, she would come up like 600 times a day, like hundreds and hundreds of times a day, the more that you immediately identify that person and apply some curiosity and even a little humor to that person, she starts coming out as much because she feels heard she doesn’t need to let me know anything anymore. She she’s good to go. Now that voice will come out maybe like once every six months? Like, are you really going to eat that? And I’m like, Oh, who are you? Like, get away from me? You know, it’s so obviously not my voice. And that’s what’s so powerful. And I want people to understand is that those voices start to go away, the more that they’re heard, they just need you to listen to them. It’s this firing from your nervous system, saying hi, I need to tell you something. So there’s a habituation and it’s the same thing when the more you make food decisions in accordance to what your brain and body wants, the less urgency and the less your amygdala has to take over. Because when you’re soothing your nervous system throughout the day, and checking in with yourself and having these conversations and listening, the actual fear response isn’t going to be as high because part of the fear response is you being ignored. So that’s why all of these strategies that Stephanie you just laid out for us so beautifully. How they all come into play is that the more that we listen to ourselves, the more that we connect with our bodies and identify things going on with our bodies, the less you get into that wolf mode, we’ll call it because you’re not compiling all of these issues on top of each other, you’re finally able to, like, have peace because again, you’re not going over that stress threshold throughout the day. So check ins, anything to do to to sue their vagus nerve, anything to do to listen to yourself anything to do to respond to yourself with compassion. Are there any other strategies we’re missing for what people can do pre a binge during a binge after a binge that feels really important for you to share?
Stephanie Mara Fox
Yeah, so I want everyone who’s listening to this right now, I actually want you to take out your phone. And I want you to put in a reminder to check in with yourself around could be 12, one, two o’clock in the afternoon, whatever kind of works for you and your day, when you normally maybe get a break from work, or you’re on a lunch break or something like that. And I want you to make it a recurring experience and a recurring reminder in your phone. Because what I often find is that we’re so focused on the binge eating behavior that can often what I find, sometimes it could start first thing in the morning and then happens all day long. But for most individuals, what I’ve seen is that it may be starts in the afternoon or the evenings. And they’re like we’ve been talking about there’s so much that’s already been wanting your attention that we have to like I see it as kind of a dam and that the binge eating is like really trying to like poke some holes and like we got to like release some stuff. This is too much for us to process that if we start kind of poking some holes in there beforehand, with that mid day check in and just seeing Okay, in that check in. You’re saying, How am I feeling right now? Just to name how you feel could be anything. You could even be like, I don’t know how I feel that is your truth in that moment, too. I am not sure I am so disconnected from myself. I don’t even know how I’m feeling. That’s totally alright. But it’s just naming. Okay, what is present with me? Even what’s been going on for me in the past hour? Is there anything that’s been going on even earlier today that I still feel like I’m processing? Oh, yeah, I’m still mad about that fight this morning. Okay, I’m still angry that still here with me. But just the process of giving yourself a second, this does not have to take long. This is not like a huge chunk of time that you have to take out of your day, your phone goes off, you’re like, Alright, check in with myself, you could do even like a really quick body scan. And just kind of notice, oh, Tommy’s tight, breath is shallow, his shoulders are hunched up. Okay, that’s how I’m feeling right now. And as soon as you name it, you might be like, well, what would it be like to maybe relax my shoulders down onto my back. And maybe I just like naturally kind of feel this impulse to kind of put my hands on my belly. Oh, maybe like, take a really deep breath. So as soon as you start naming things of how you feel, and making space for that, you’re gonna get natural impulses of how you want to respond to it. It’s kind of like saying, you know, don’t think of the pink elephant in the room. And then all you’re thinking about is the pink elephant in the room. As soon as you name how you’re feeling, you can’t be unaware of something that you are now aware of. And I think that can be just one powerful strategy that someone can start to practice as a tiny baby step, I’m really, really big into breaking things down into manageable, doable, sustainable steps. Because oftentimes, when we’re trying to heal our relationship with food, we’ve been in that pattern in that behavior for maybe decades. And it’s going to take time and has to feel so safe and so doable, every step of the way, so that you aren’t going outside of your window of tolerance. You aren’t putting yourself into a fight or flight response where then those behaviors need to be leaned on. It’s like, alright, I feel like we were talking about before, I’ve just like, I feel connected, I feel somewhat regulated. And I’m also noticing I can stay with this discomfort. This doesn’t feel like it’s like maybe the most comfortable thing to sit with and noticing I can sit with this for maybe one second. I think we also need to reframe of like, well, when you say sit with discomfort, how long does that be? You don’t have to kind of be like, Okay, I’m gonna sit with discomfort all day today. You know, it’s saying, okay, even put a timer on and say I’m going to sit with this discomfort for one second, and then move on to something else. Because if you aren’t accustomed or hasn’t there hasn’t been space to feel like I’m going to feel safe in sitting with discomfort. We have to break it down into Okay, could I sit with him for half a second and then be like, wait, you just sat with it for half a second and then you might sit with it for a second. And I know that sounds like a second that’s like nothing, but that’s why I wanted it to feel I want it to feel like this is so doable. Like I could sit with discomfort for a second that then you stay in your relaxation response. You stay connected to yourself while you are feeling discomfort. That is like okay, I could sit with this for for five seconds, and it just kind of grows from there. But we have to start small.
Michelle Shapiro
I think that that tool of just incorporating a daily check in could be really transformative for people. And I think if you are a person who is doing that work already, the next thing I would just add on to tell you to do is just get to know the physical parts of yourself like Stephanie’s mentioning, knowing what’s going on your head and your body. And then also getting to know the different voices and the different who’s steering the ship around foods decisions. And if you’re about to binge, and you’re listening to this right now, and it feels like, Hey, this is what I need right now. It’s completely okay, no judgment, come back and listen to this after and use this to reflect with a little bit of curiosity of what happened and what you needed and what you still need. And no matter what, there’s no shame in the fact that you’re doing something to support yourself. And the ultimate goal and the ultimate, I guess, hack to reduce binge eating is getting to a place where your body is communicating with you. And your brain is responding to what your body is saying. I think that’s both at the core of what Stephanie and I practice. Stephanie, I cannot thank you enough for coming on today. Where can people learn even more wisdom from you and work with you and all that good stuff?
Stephanie Mara Fox
Yeah, again, it just is always such a joy to connect with you. And I feel such amazing community with you. Because we do kind of practice in this way where there is no right or wrong. And it all gets to be a part of an individual’s unique journey and discovering what’s going to work for them. So that we don’t kind of make anything wrong, even if it’s like, okay, you want to try a diet sure, like, but let’s kind of pay attention to how your body responds to that. Because we don’t live in your body, only you are going to know what is best for your body. And that has to be through play, and experimentation and exploration to ultimately discover this for yourself. So where you can learn more about me is I am on probably every single social media platform that you could possibly find me so I am on Instagram, I am on Tik Tok, I am on LinkedIn. I am on Facebook, and you can find most of those at Stephanie Mara, that’s ma RA and Stephanie with a pH IE and Stephanie mirror or Stephanie Mara Fox. And you can also find all of the links to all my social media on my website. And that’s Stephanie mehra.com. So I work with individuals one on one through my somatic nutritional counseling practice. So if you want to work one on one with me, I actually do have openings right now. Additionally, I also have a program called the somatic eating program. And so if you want to do this work more in a group, you can go to somatic eating.com. And you can sign up for the waitlist, I that program actually just ended recently. And I will be running it again right before the summer. So if you are interested in doing this in a group that is available, and then I have more of an intro to somatic eating mini course. So if you want to just kind of get a taste more of my work and the things that I teach, it is a very small, doable self led course that you can also play with as well. And so you can find me in all of those places, and I would love to connect with you, you know, please sign up for my newsletter as well on my website. I also have a podcast that Michelle has come on and it is a fantastic episode. So I also recommend that you go over there and listen to our episode over there. And it’s called satiated. And so you know look for Michelle’s podcast episode over there as well and you know, you can connect with me in my work there. Additionally,
Michelle Shapiro
I could not recommend running to Stephanie’s Instagram more every post you make I am so obsessed with so much so that I like comments and I was like Can we just talk one day before we even before we even like actually formally connected I was like Stephanie Can you like be my friend like really? Like I adore you and the way you practice? I think this episode will be so supportive for people as a really good starting point and then looking at your programs are working with you is another amazing amazing supportive strategy to reduce binge eating. Thank you so freakin much. You’re the best.
Stephanie Mara Fox
Yeah, thank you so much for having me.
Michelle Shapiro
Thank you so much for tuning in to the quiet the diet podcast. If you found any of this information relevant or you related to it, please feel free to share the podcast it would mean the world to us. Also remember to subscribe so you don’t miss any episodes and you can follow us on Instagram at quiet the diet pod. We’ll put the link in the show notes after each episode. Thank you again for listening and I can’t wait to see you in the next episode.
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